Category Archives: Educators

Trinity High School Teacher Patrick Newman Pleads Guilty to Child Exploitation Charges [*Update]

Back in June, I wrote about the case of Patrick Newman, a Social Studies teacher at Trinity High School, an all-boys Catholic school in Louisville, KY. Following a tip by Twitter to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, investigators determined that Newman had used Vine (a video app owned by Twitter), Kik, and…

Cyberethics for Educators: The Rising Cost of Digital Misconduct [Lecture]

2015-08-19 Cyberethics for Educators from Frederick Lane I had the pleasure of returning to lecture in San Bernardino approximately six months after my first visit. During that time, the name of the organization, Southern California School Risk Management, has been shortened by dropping the “Southern,” to reflect that the fact that the organization is now…

Warning to Sec. Clinton: OR Teacher Discovers Snapchat Messages Don’t Always Disappear

Unless you’ve been living under a fairly large rock for the past few months, you are probably aware of the fact that former Secretary of State (and Democratic presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton has been in a little bit of hot water over the fact that she set up and used a private email server in…

WA Teacher Used Fake Facebook Page to Arrange Trysts with 15-yo Student

It’s been a disturbing couple of months at Evergreen High School in Vancouver, WA. In mid-June, science teacher Matthew Morasch was caught trying to shoot upskirt videos of female students. Now comes the news that Stephanie McCrea, a married theater and English teacher at Evergreen High, pleaded guilty on July 30 “to four counts of…

MN Teacher Uses School-Issued iPad to Take “Creepshots” of Students

A 38-year-old Mora High School teacher named Benjamin Rossow is facing 17 charges of interference with privacy following the discovery that Rossow used his school-issued iPad to take so-called “creepshots” of numerous female students. As the Washington Post explained last fall, creepshots “are essentially just what they sound like: sneaky, surreptitious photos of a person’s,…

YouTube Video of Burlesque Performance Costs VA Teacher Her Job

Burlesque — or at least the tassled-and-g-stringed version that arose in America — hit its peak of popularity in the early 20th century, before a combination of Prohibition and adult movie theaters largely wiped it out. Over the last twenty years or so, however, there has been a growing revival of the art form that…

“Innocuous” Photo of Breast Grope Causes Problems for PA Teacher

A goofy but reportedly “innocent” photo posted to Instagram has landed a Rochester (PA) Area School District teacher in hot water. At the District’s prom in May, high school chemistry teacher Amy Douglas posed for a photograph with two female students. According to the description published by a local Web site, BeaverCountian.com, the photo clearly…

UK’s South West Grid for Learning Promotes “Cybertraps for Educators”

At the 2014 Annual Conference of the Family Online Safety Institute, I had the pleasure of meeting of Ken Corish, the Senior Manager responsible for Compliance and the UK Safer Internet Centre at the South West Grid for Learning, a not-for-profit charitable trust in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of products, services…

Queensland Teacher Retains License Despite Failure to Maintain Professional Standards

A rude Facebook comment, combined with some other inappropriate classroom conduct, nearly cost a Queensland, Australia teacher his license this spring. In the end, however, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal determined that Dion Ashley Paulsen had taken sufficient steps to reform his behavior and allowed him to continue teaching. Paulsen, who teaches in the…

Brooklyn HS Teacher Illustrates Risks for Vulnerable Educators

Unlike most of the entries in this blog that involve teacher misconduct, this is not a story that begins or ends with high-tech malfeasance. It does, however, offer an unusually well-documented example of the role that emotional vulnerabilities can play in contributing to the various types of cybertraps that snare so many educators. According to…