Ethical Dilemma

As soon as I saw this weeks activity I immediately went straight to the Code of Ethics for Registered Teachers. It was then I started thinking about some of the 'ethical dilemmas' that I as a teacher have faced and never really thought about reflecting on how to approach the dilemma using the code. I will however now that I have been able to respond to a situation appropriately. I have chosen one situation I found myself in last year which I have chosen to use as part of this task.

Background to Situation:
I had a Year 5/6 classroom who all had internet access at home. Many of them were interested in social media accounts however being under 13 it is against the law for them to have access to an account.

Situation:
While completing independent work I noticed a note being passed around the classroom. I managed to intercept such note and proceeded to read what was being passed around. It turned out to be a Year 5 female students Instagram log on. After doing some research it turned out that the account was in fact the students own personal account (illegal as she was 9) and was completely public.

I was then faced with my ethical dilemma. What to do next with this information. After discussing privacy and social media forums legal expectations with the child it became clear that her mother was aware of the account and was even a 'follower'. It was a hard place to be in so we discussed what policies these pages had in regards to age and that not everyone in Instagram was there to be her friend. She then looked at her followers list and noted that out of the 100 followers she knew 10 of these people personally. We then discussed how to be safe online and she deleted who she did not know and made the account private. For me this came under my commitment to the learner. It was very tempting to just have her delete the entire account and be done with it however I had suspicions that this would just lead to her creating a new public account and starting again.

I also then logged the incident into our cyber safety log (as per school policy) and discussed with our schools cyber safety officer. She suggested speaking to the child's mother about what had been happening and reminding her of the legal fine print of these sites - Commitment to the parent/guardians. She also then spoke to the child again about the seriousness of the situation and the risks that she had put herself in.

I felt comfortable with how the situation had been resolved as I feel that school policies were followed correctly and I did not jeopordise myself in regards to the Code of Ethics. It is important that we are always honest with the people we interact with as teaching professionals and that we minimise harm to ourselves and in this case others.