@alicekeeler assume your school is reading your emails. #teacher #teaching #privacy #email ♬ FEEL THE GROOVE – Queens Road, Fabian Graetz
Whether you are a teacher at a school or an employee at a corporation… your work email is NOT yours. Company (or school) email is owned by the company or school. This gives them the right to read your emails at any time. The freedom of information act also could be enforced on your emails providing the public access to your emails.
Is the School Reading Your Email?
Probably not. However, since they CAN at any time it is recommended to be mindful of anything you write into an email. Assume you are cc’ing your administration on it. What would you say then?
Let’s say an incident occurs. It is not so crazy to think that one place the school will look in their investigation is your email. I, personally, would not rely on the low probability of the school reading my emails. Safer is to assume they are reading it and use your email accordingly.
Have a Personal Email Account
I highly highly highly discourage anyone from using a school account for anything other than school business. Your only email account should NOT BE your school email. Again, you do not own your school account. They can cut you off of your email without any notice and are under no obligation to allow you to have access to the account.
If you retire or resign, do all of your contacts know you by your school email? This will be stressful and challenging to make the switch later. Suggestion to create a personal email account and respond to all personal emails from your school account with a request to please use your new email account and to kindly update their contact list.
When I get a professional email to my personal account or a personal email to my professional account I will forward said email to myself. This allows me to respond from the preferred account that I wish to utilize.