Trust and Honesty

It's part of my philosophy as a college freshman English teacher that sometimes my class needs to play "home room" for my students. Occasionally this takes the form of student griping, but most often, we have discussions about current, pertinent issues.

For example, I assigned ENG 120's third essay today (and it will be written as an out-of-class essay, instead of an in-class essay):


Topic: Nearly everyone uses social networking sites today, but the largest group of users is still college students. While many people consider social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to be private, the truth is rather the opposite. Many college students are unaware that what they post on their so-called “private” pages is accessible to future possible employers and may cost them a potential job. What material on social websites should users be wary of posting, how will these sites affect students in their future job searches, and could these sites have positive uses as well?

To provide background for this topic, we discuss this article about employers who did not hire candidates because of something on the candidates' social networking site. To further illustrate my point, I ask students to volunteer to allow me to Google them in front of the class. Quite often, when I am able to pull up their Facebook and/or Myspace profiles, students become very nervous--and with good reason; according to the poll, 69% of employers who responded at one time rejected a candidate because of material on his or her social networking profile!

This discussion leads to "best practices" with Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc., and it also leads to questions from my students as to how they can better use their social networking. I use myself as an example, showing them my Twitter handle (@Caribe_prof), my Facebook page (not profile), and LinkedIn profile.

Overall, I think my students appreciate that this assignment is not only interesting, but it also teaches them something they can apply to the real world and may even help them when applying to jobs in the future.