I'm a teacher and am on twitter. I follow lots of education bloggers and other teachers, as well as the usual bbc news feed etc. I haven't kept my tweets private as I want to engage in dialogue with other teachers and educationalists, so I am careful what I say on there.
I expect you all know about the 13 year old girl who wrote an open letter to Michael Gove in regard to the proposed removal of Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird from the syllabus? It was being retweeted over and over. I retweeted it and tweeted the girl (she tweets under the name Charli) saying 'I'm an English teacher and you would be an awesome student.' Then I followed her, as she fits my criteria (education blogger). She also favourited my tweet to her.
Since then I seem to have acquired about 6 new followers. They are all boys aged 15 - 18, not my own students but of a similar age, and it's freaking me out slightly. Why would these boys want to follow me? Is it something I should worry about from a child protection point of view? Was I wrong to follow Charli , since although she is engaged with the issues I am interested in, she's a 13 year old schoolgirl?