Summer is half over, which means it’s time to start thinking back to school. While that may mean fresh sneakers, jeans and hard drives, it’s also a time to start navigating school handbooks and checking out policies. For Missouri students, the message will be loud and clear this fall - no Facebooking with your teachers.
Missouri Senate Bill 54 — which goes into effect on August 28 — is an effort to “more clearly define teacher-student boundaries.”
SECTION 162.069 - Teachers cannot establish, maintain, or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child's legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian. Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student. Former student is defined as any person who was at one time a student at the school at which the teacher is employed and who is eighteen years of age or less and who has not graduated.
A Canadian study, while stopping short of being law, came to the same conclusion: teachers and students shouldn't be friends.
"We're not suggesting [teachers] shouldn't use Facebook, but we are suggesting that the private profile that students have and exchanges between teacher and students are not appropriate," said Michael Salvatori, registrar and CEO of the college.
The report specifically advises teachers not to accept or initiate Facebook friend requests with students and advises them against following students on Twitter.
Sure, the line between personal and professional is constantly being blurred as we plow down the social media highway, but these sorts of rules can be a little far reaching. Let’s be real - Facebook is the internet for a lot of people. It’s their email, it’s their games, it’s their browsing, and it’s their chat.
I work at a radio station that has a request line. It used to be THAT was the way people had their questions answered by the DJ, now they hit our Facebook wall to requests songs, check on prizes and other business.
This is a text generation that time shifts not only their tv watching with PVR, but their communications by doing it on Facebook walls, Twitter and more.
So banning teachers and students from Facebook friending each other may eliminate the cross pollination of social and professional, but it also eliminates a vital line of communication in the classroom. While I’m on board with keeping students away from the over sharing of their teachers, and vice versa, there is a way Facebook can be effectively used.
Teachers need to create Pages for their classes for the students to Like. For example, Mr Smith Math 11, Miss Johnson English 12 etc. The students and teachers are still using the comfortable framework for communicating - Facebook - but a wall has been put up between the profiles. This keeps the social networking professional, public and on point.
Teachers can post practice questions for tests, answer questions about assignments, throw up links for supplementary reading and more. Students will also be able to engage each other in a dialogue on the materials leading to more peer tutoring. The students will have all the course material still populate their news feed, but they won’t be seeing pics of the Faculty Pub Crawl.
What are the rules at your school for teachers and social networking?
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