I will be the first one to tell you I am far from perfect. Further, when I make a mistake, when I am wrong I will admit it. Recently I wrote a note going on and on about how angry the new law about teachers and social networking sites had made me. I have since that writing discovered that I like everyone else was misinformed. I would like to do what I can to set the record straight.
I have never met Amy, but April has. My neice April and Amy are good friends. They spend quality time with each other several times a week. When I went to visit my family in Columbia, April would educate me on how wrong I really was. Amy purposed this law with the purest of motives and heart. It seems that while in the 7th grade an art teacher took advantage of her. She felt powerless and all alone. The teacher was not purnished, but allothowed to obtain a different position in another school and repeat his abuse more than once. Amy lived with this for many years and she felt like she had to do something, to protect those students who really had no other voice, who might be feeling helpless and alone.
The law as she proposed it had nothing about social media networks. The spirit of the law was to come up with a system that insured that a teacher who committed such an act with a student would not be able to obtain another position where he or she might repeat the crime. It was a politician who added that very small part of the law that has actually taken on a life of it's own. The media took that very small added piece of the law and blew it hugely out of proportion. The law was to protect students from preditors, not to cut off relationships between students and teachers.
The sad part, in my opinion is that this woman has received death threats. She has been dragged through the mud. It makes me very sad.
I was wrong. I admit it publically. I ask Amy to please forgive my lack of understand and patience to learn the true nature of this law. We all need a little help from our friends, some more than others. Thank you for caring so much and doing what really is a wonderful, unselfish way to protect our students
I have never met Amy, but April has. My neice April and Amy are good friends. They spend quality time with each other several times a week. When I went to visit my family in Columbia, April would educate me on how wrong I really was. Amy purposed this law with the purest of motives and heart. It seems that while in the 7th grade an art teacher took advantage of her. She felt powerless and all alone. The teacher was not purnished, but allothowed to obtain a different position in another school and repeat his abuse more than once. Amy lived with this for many years and she felt like she had to do something, to protect those students who really had no other voice, who might be feeling helpless and alone.
The law as she proposed it had nothing about social media networks. The spirit of the law was to come up with a system that insured that a teacher who committed such an act with a student would not be able to obtain another position where he or she might repeat the crime. It was a politician who added that very small part of the law that has actually taken on a life of it's own. The media took that very small added piece of the law and blew it hugely out of proportion. The law was to protect students from preditors, not to cut off relationships between students and teachers.
The sad part, in my opinion is that this woman has received death threats. She has been dragged through the mud. It makes me very sad.
I was wrong. I admit it publically. I ask Amy to please forgive my lack of understand and patience to learn the true nature of this law. We all need a little help from our friends, some more than others. Thank you for caring so much and doing what really is a wonderful, unselfish way to protect our students
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