Negative Comments within the Scratch community

Hi!

I'm wondering whether any of the teachers here have had negative experiences with their students and the Scratch community and how they have handled it.  What happened to me on the surface doesn't seem that strong compared to what goes on elsewhere on the internet but it has dampened and tarnished Scratch at our school.  I am hoping that others might help me know how best to respond to the situation, since I am just a volunteer teacher and my experience at classroom teaching is limited.

I was the one to set up teaching Scratch at my school.  I had each student in 2-5 set up a Scratch account using their first name only followed by the initial of our school.  I asked them not to post their photos and to mindful that things were somewhat public online.  It didn't occur to me that perhaps I should have gathered permission from parents ahead of time.  It didn't seem much different to me, in concern, than having the students access National Geographic and similar sites online.  There are only about fifty students in the entire school and the other teachers are not very involved with computers so, although they had heard me rave about Scratch, they probably did not think too much about it later and thought, I found out later, that I had more control of the situation than I actually could have.

Overall, the students have been very enthusiastic about Scratch and some do it at home as well, which I basically thought was a good thing.

However, for whatever reason, one of the older boys commented on a project of another Scratch student somewhere in the USA saying that their project was "lame".  I don't know whether he made this comment from home or while he was in my classroom.  The first I heard about it was when I found the teachers and students very upset that the student at the other school had, in return, posted a comment to my student's project containing mild profanities at the quality of my student's project.

I was called on the carpet by the teachers that operate the school.  They couldn't believe that I would expose the students to something where they might receive comments like this.  They also couldn't believe that I would put the students in a situation where I wasn't reviewing each comment they received before they could read it.  I was told that the situation was completely unacceptable and that the parents would never tolerate it.

We were on vacation break for a week and today I submitted a parent approval form for Scratch which I had put together, referring to the website and speaking of the benefits of the program, explaining how the community operated in a generally positive manner and asking their permission.  I gave the form to the head teacher and she said that she needed time to review it with the other teachers and I am to refrain from teaching Scratch until the other teachers come to a decision.  I'm not really a participating member of the teachers' group since I am just a volunteer teacher two mornings a week.  In the past, I think I have generally been on good terms with the regular teachers, so I will wait and hope that we will be able to continue using Scratch in some form.

How have the rest of you handled situations like this?  I feel really terrible about doing anything negative towards the students, particularly on issues concerning safety and self-esteem.  My wife, who has much more teaching experience than me, though compared it like this.  What if my student on the playground had yelled out through the fence to some driver passing by that their driving was lame?  Then perhaps that driver might respond with a curse or similar.  In this case the driver would actually have seen the student.  Would the playground supervisor be responsible and in what way?

Are there some materials on a Scratch site that might give me some guidance on issues with classroom safety and parents?

Thanks.