In May 2014, a substitute teacher at Highland Park High School in Highland Park, IL (a suburb just north of Chicago) raised concerns that two of his students had been cheating. Following an internal investigation, the high school not only sided with the students but told Steven Habay, then 40, that he was being released…
A short time ago, I wrote a blog post about the need to reframe the discussion over the involunatary capture and distribution of intimate images (colloquially described as “revenge porn”) so as to better capture its true nature: “electronic sexual assault.” One of the concerns that I expressed in that post is that the terminology…
Over the last couple of years, I’ve dived deeply into the topic of teacher misconduct. The cases I’ve studied and summarized have ranged widely, from the merely sad to the reprehensible to the truly horrifying. One thing is abundantly clear: we need to improve teacher candidate education and professional development to better instruct educators about…
The annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) is being held in Washington, DC this week, and as usual, it is has been an energizing and thought-provoking experience. FOSI Founder and CEO Steven Balkam and his staff do a terrific job of putting together a compelling slate of presentations on some of the…
On Wednesday, October 28, a freshman at Mulberry High School in Mulberry, FL approached her teacher’s desk to ask a question about classwork that had been assigned. As she neared Vadi Velez-Gonzalez’s desk, she could see his iPhone lying face-up on his desk, and was shocked to see it displaying images of adult gay pornography.…
Japanese electronics manufacturing firm Sony made official a marketplace decision rendered nearly thirty years ago: By March 2016 (if not sooner), Sony will stop manufacturing all Betamax video cassettes. The news marks the end of a 40-year run for a video-recording format once hailed as a market leader in picture quality (so much so, in…
State College, PA has had its share of unpleasant headlines recently (see, e.g. “Sandusky, Jerry“). Now come reports that Wesley Amy, a State College Area High School computer science teacher, has been convicted by a jury of offering students good grades in exchange for nude photos. The 28-year-old educator began teaching computer science at the…
A long-time Chicago middle school teacher, who sparked an international manhunt after fleeing sexual assault charges, was sentenced on Thursday, November 5, to 50 years in prison. “You earned every day of it,” Judge Daniel Shanes told 42-year-old Michael Vucic, an 18-year veteran at Gavin South Middle School in Ingleside, IL. An arrest warrant was…
Three students at Ponderosa High School in Ponderosa, CA are now facing child pornography charges following two separate incidents over the past two weeks. In a press release issued on October 17, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office announced the discovery a sexually explicit video involving three minors: On October 14, 2015, at Ponderosa High…
2015-10-19 Teens, Technology, and Suicide: Understanding Causes, Effects, and “Bullycide” from Frederick Lane A Featured Presentation delivered with Joanne Harpel, JD, MPhil, at the 2015 Annual Conference of the New York State School Boards Association on October 19 and October 20, 2015 in New York, NY. If you are interested in discussing a presentation or…
