A monolgue to the Grade 11s

"Raise your hand if you have a faceb00k page."

80% of hands raise including myself, the assistant principal and the principal. Horrified gasps from students are heard.

"Raise your hand if you have a friend with a faceb00k page."

100% of hands raised.

"Now as some of you noted, I have an account. And while I was on winter vacation I spent some time looking around, which is the only time that I really have to do such a thing. Unlike you, whom I see checking your wall and updating in between classes. Heck, some of you do it even during class... not my class of course, I'd kill you.

However, as I was looking around I saw several of you in photos. All it takes is for me to be a friend of one of your friends. And even if you have your account set to "only my friends can see" as soon as you tag one of my friends in a photo, I get to see all the photos in that album.

I've seen you at clubs, smoking, drinking, showing off champagne bottles covered in corsets. At these clubs there are often women dancing in their underwear and for some reason you take photos of these women and put it on your faceb00k account.

Now, I understand that we live in Russia, where the legal age for drinking and smoking is 18 and only rarely enforced. Fine. Do what you want in your own time! But don't put photos on faceb00k. And here's why. Those colleges that you're applying to, the ones with thousands of applicants. They need someway to make a final decision. And so they'll go to faceb00k or other such places. And if all they see is that you're a party kid, do you really think they want you representing their university?"

I think this was the first assembly that held all the students' attention. And I've gotten some great feed back such as:

"Ms. S, I never knew that stuff. I've updated my profile."

"Ms. S, you know you were right. I realized I had added these people that I met at a conference and then I was looking at their friends and one of them had MY FACE as their profile picture."

"Ms. S, some of us are getting together to take pictures of us studying for math to add to our profiles." That, obviously, was my favorite.