Need some insight about this situation!!

[shooting star]

I am a 1st year teacher, teaching 5th grade. One of my girls asked me if I had a "myspace" page, I do not, nor would I tell her if I did. (For those who may not know, myspace is an online community website for 18+ - it is completely inappropriate for 10 year olds due to what people post on their pages, the pictures and the general age of the people on it).
Anyway, I looked up her page, and she has a picture of herself, and some inappropriate content on her page. Not only that, but she and another student wrote comments back and forth about ME! Nothing too serious, but they did say Ms. _________ with my name. They also were joking around about something going on between me and my mentor teacher, because they walked by us when we were working together after school. Anyway, there are obviously several issues here...
1) the girls are inviting sick people to contact them and lying about their ages, and I worry for their safety. 2) I am extremely uncomfortable with my name being on the internet. 3) some of the references on their pages are completely inappropriate.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. My gut tells me to talk to the girls privately and tell them that they need to remove their pages, and discuss the above reasons. But, there is another part of me that wonders if I should contact their parents.
Does anyone have any advice???? Thank you!!!

 

[Carrie in WV]

Administration

Have you mentioned this to your administrator? That seems to me to be the first place to go.

 

[Mrs. G]

I recommend...

Printing out a copy for your administrator and calling a parent conference with both children's parents. As a parent I would want to know that my child is endangering him/herself in that way. Have your administrator sit in with you. Run don't walk with this situation!

 

[EMO109]

Myspace problems

It's funny that you mentioned that webpage because we just had a discussion about it today at school. Apparently this is a huge problem at the middle school and high school for the same reasons you mentioned. I don't think it's come up yet at the elementary school, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

I would definitely bring it to the attention of your principal and the parents. You're right to be concerned and I'm sure most parents would be happy to know what their child is posting for everyone to see. In addition, I would also mention it to the technology person in your building or district (if you have one). They may be able to talk about Internet safety with kids and/or parents.

 

[kirsten]

re:

As a parent, I would definitely be livid if I found out a teacher was aware of something this dangerous and had not notified me. I agree iwth the other posters - print out the page and set up a conference with the parents and your principal.

 

[SC]

I second that advice

I just wanted to say that I agree with everyone else's advice:
Contact administration
Inform parents

I would also probably address it with the students too - probably at the same time that I discussed it with their parents.

 

[shooting star]

Thank you!

After posting this and thinking about it some more, I definitely decided to talk to my vice principal first thing this morning. She told me to print out the pages, which I did when I got home (the site is fortunately blocked from school computers!). We decided that I would give her the pages, and she would call the parents and we would meet with them together. I also printed out the page of one of girl's "friends" who is a 19 year old with disgusting comments on his page. My VP is also going to talk to the principal about possibly having a parent meeting for the upper grades regarding this site. Many of our parents do not speak English and are most likely not aware of the material on the site.
Thank you VERY much for all your advice. I really appreciate it. I woke up thinking about it in the middle of the night and what I had to do was crystal clear. So, it was nice to come back to this site and read your replies and KNOW I did the right thing. Thank you!

 

[Carrie in WV]

Hope it goes well

I hope that the parents will receive everything without blinding loyalty to their kids. I know that sounds bad, but so many parents are oblivious...

I saw a newspaper article about myspace.com regarding the murder of a female college freshman at the University of Richmond back in September. She had a page and what she was writing about and doing came as a total shock to her mom. It is so sad. And it is very scary to be a parent of a teenager these days...I have two of them. Thank you for the heads up on this problem. When we share things like this, it really helps out so many different people.