Should teachers allow their students to “friend” them on Facebook? The Houston Chronicle, following up on a local story of an ex-school aide accused of having sexual exchanges with a 16-year-old former student he contacted online, asks where teachers should draw the line.
Opinions are mixed. Opponents fear innocent educators will be branded sexual predators for chatting with students online, while proponents caution against overreacting to a powerful communication tool.
Most school districts, says the Chronicle, have yet to “define the rules of virtual engagement. In the Houston area, many districts block access to social-networking sites on campus computers, but they don’t have policies addressing after-hours use between educators and students.”
Having current and former students as Facebook friends could be a particularly sensitive issue for KIPP charter schools and others where teachers are encouraged to give students their cell phone numbers. KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg tells the Chronicle he limits his Facebook contacts to alumni. “My personal threshold,” he says, “is not to accept friends on Facebook from KIPP-sters until they are in college.” But Joseph Miller who runs the KIPP to College program tells the paper Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with current and former students.
Comments from teachers following the story show strongly divided opinions. Says one, “Here’s the thing; a teacher is NOT a student’s “friend.” It’s called professionalism.” Echoes another, “As a teacher of 8 years, I have never had the desire or the need to communicate with my students directly outside of the classroom. If I have an issue concerning absenteeism, behavior, or academics with my students that can not be handled in class, then I go directly to the parents and make them at least aware of the issue and leave it to them to accept their responsibility as a parent to raise their own child.” However another teacher who uses Facebook points out,
“I teach at a school, however, where most students don’t have this kind of [parental] support at home, either because the parents are working multiple jobs or there’s something negative going on. I don’t seek my students out, but do let them “friend” me if they like. This does not mean that we are FRIENDS. It does let me keep an extra eye on them and make sure they are not doing/saying things they’re not supposed to. They find ways to slyly let me know that they appreciate that there’s someone who admonishes them with they curse, etc.”
Ultimately the question of to friend or not to friend becomes a proxy for the nature of the teacher/student relationship. As another teacher on the Chronicle site puts it:
I am a teacher and it’s a long time coming that people wake up and realize that professionalism doesn’t mean de-humanizing yourself. A lot of times kids need to know that a teacher is human. Too many times teachers come into the classroom thinking that all the are going to do is teach. That’s the wrong assumption. Teachers are counselors, motivators, nurses aides, even temporary banks when kids forget their lunch money. Wouldn’t a parent want to know that their kids had a teacher like that?…We have to realize that this is the way the kids communicate. Most of my students are far more techno savvy than I am and have mobile applications for facebook on their iphones and smartphones. They are always on the go and this is the mode of communication. It’s a major communication shift that not just teachers, but more people need to learn how to integrate into our lives. The days of waiting for the land line phone to ring to get info are no more.
In the alternative certification program I went through, the New York City Teaching Fellows, one of the oft-repeated homilies was “students have to know that you care before they care what you know.” While we were never explicity told to engage with our students after hours, playing basketball with kids after school, or taking them to a museum on the weekend was taken as proof of our commitment and praised. On the other hand, the message was decidedly mixed: we were also warned explicitly never to allow ourselves to be in a classroom alone with a student with the door closed for any reason.
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