Cherokee
families,
Over
the weekend someone created a couple of anonymous Twitter accounts. Thankfully
both were deleted last night. Unfortunately, copycat accounts and other similar
accounts will be created in the future.
The
reason I am emailing you is to inform you these type of activities do occur
from time to time with middle school students. What may start out as something
they consider to be ‘funny’ ultimately turns inappropriate and hurtful.
While
the student(s) who created the accounts have not been indentified we do know
the number of students who actively participated are very small.
The
silver lining in this situation is we had a greater number of our students
stand up and speak out to these anonymous accounts and to their classmates to
stop the negative activity. Thank you students and families!
You
may be asking why I would reach out to you all if the numbers are so small. I
believe our job is to educate and learn together. We can help our young people
make great choices, continue to praise and encourage them to stand up instead
of standby or participate in these negative activities.
I
want to thank the three parents who notified me of these accounts. Thanks to
them and several students speaking up we were able to reach out to Twitter to
report the accounts and I also called these anonymous students out on Twitter
last night with messages from my personal account @MrPowersCMS and retweeted by
the @CherokeeSPS account.
Feel
free to check either of those account timelines to read the two tweets I sent
and then the third after the accounts were deleted.
My
hope is from this we as a school community can help our students learn from
this situation.
1)
We have included Character Education in what we do at Cherokee for many, many
years. This year we have also started embedding Digital Citizenship as well.
While
both of these are a start and certainly build upon the foundation you as
families have laid it isn’t always enough. We as adults can guide and model
appropriate behavior, but we must also monitor their online activity as well.
2)
I’d like to remind all families to please be aware of what your children are
doing online. Whether it is websites, blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat,
online gaming, etc. Please know your child’s passwords, monitor their activity,
and have open and honest conversations with them about their digital footprint
and the harm it can cause to themselves and to others.
Social
media and online apps come and go and the next ‘thing’ will pop up overnight. Please
be aware and monitor.
3)
We had already begun planning a guest speaker for our students, staff, and
families next semester. We have finalized the date, but not the time. This
guest speaker will provide us all even more tips, tools, and advice on how to
better support our young people in the online world.
Please
stay tuned for more information on this in the weeks to come.
Please
encourage your students to not retweet, tweet, like, follow, or participate in
these type of negative behaviors.
Thank
you for partnering with us and your continued support,
Bill Powers
Principal
Cherokee Middle School
420 E. Farm Road 182
Springfield, MO 65810
Ph: 417-523-7210
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who
cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
- Alvin Toffler
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