Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been wanting to write for the past few days but haven't seemed to be able to find the time. I won't get time to post tomorrow as I'm going upstate to spend Thanksgiving with some friends so here we go...
Monday night in one of my classes some student's gave a presentation on teaching - is it a 24/7 job?? They took the angle of professionalism. Hmmm I could already tell I was going to have a few opinions on this. One of the main points was that teachers in some states are being told that they cannot be friends with their student's on facebook.... well isn't that common sense?! Who wants their student's (and possibly their parents!) digging around in their personal lives?! I certainly don't. As teacher's we have to maintain some sort of boundaries.
The group also looked at individual cases of teacher's who had been suspended or fired because of incriminating pictures. Said teacher's were fired/suspended due to the presence of alcohol in the pictures... well aren't teachers allowed to have a personal life too?! I saw the pictures and the teacher's involved did not look in any way intoxicated, just like they were out for a meal with friends. Why is this such a bad thing?? Are teacher's not supposed to touch alcohol for the rest of their lives?! Surely that what teacher's decide to do in their personal lives is their choice (obviously within reason, if they were doing something illegal then that's another matter)??!! Ooooooh it rubs my back up! The worst thing is that other teacher's who were known to have gone out with the teacher who got fired were not even given a warning! What is going on in this world of ours today?! Why is this okay?!?!
Finally the group talked about parents expectations. Teacher's should be teaching children how to behave, how to have respect, how to treat other people etc etc. Well, er, shouldn't this start at home?! The best way to see it is this: the parent's are the child's first teacher and the teacher is the second. I do believe teacher's SHOULD be reinforcing the above things but they have to start in the home. Parents have to be accountable too. Teacher's only have a limited number of hours they spend with their student's; we also have to take into account that there are normally around 20-30 student's in each classroom. Now I just want to make it clear that I'm not writing about this to get anyones back up... they're my own opinions and everyone is entitled to their own :) I know I sometimes have strong opinions, but I believe that everyone is entitled to their own life and we all have a choice as to how we live it. So anyway, enough! Happy Thanksgiving everyone, enjoy!!!