An E-mail a Day

By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2005

Kathleen Eveleigh routinely misses calls from parents. Such is the life of a teacher charged with wrangling five- and six-year-olds through a busy day of kindergarten.

But parents know they can reach Eveleigh each day via e-mail. “E-mail is a lot quicker, and I can do it on my terms,” says Eveleigh, who teaches at Mary Scroggs Elementary in Chapel Hill, NC.

But while technology, especially e-mail, is becoming ubiquitous in classrooms, schools are taking steps to make sure teachers understand what can be mentioned in an e-mail message—and what might be better left unwritten.

Some schools are even issuing guidelines. Among them is Salem Public Schools in Massachusetts, which warns staff on its Web site that “parent teacher communication via e-mail is not secure and that any e-mail can become a public record.”

Eveleigh and her fellow teachers have similarly been requested to attach a disclaimer to all of their e-mails stating, “All e-mail correspondence… may result in monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.” The school doesn’t issue any formal guidelines, she says, “Just that we be professional.”

That can be difficult if a teacher is dealing with a mom concerned over her child’s poor marks. But for Eveleigh, parent e-mails more likely concern such issues as a child being picked on during recess. “And the children e-mail me, even over the summer,” she says. “They like to keep in touch.”