Allie Townsend reported at Time about a Massachusetts school district’s rule which attempts to keep teachers from acting like morons. In Hey Teach Get Off the Facebook: District Bans Teacher-Student Friendships Townsend reported:
School officials in Norton, Mass., having issued a ruling against online connections between teachers and current or former students. Worried about potential inappropriate Internet communications between teacher and pupil, the board made a plea to teachers to avoid social media relationships with students – or else.
As inappropriate teacher-student Facebook scandals have been made public in recent weeks (three in New York public schools alone) school boards are attempting to eliminate the possibility of a problem by issuing rules to faculty and staff forbidding social media connections with students, mainly on sites Facebook or MySpace. “We want to head it off at the pass,” one school board member told the Boston Globe. “Teachers know this already, but we wanted to have something official on the books.”
More and more school districts are considering rules about social media contact between teachers and students.
Lisa Fleisher is reporting in the Wall Street Journal article, City Lays Out Digital Rules For Teachers:
The Department of Education also is considering asking parents to sign consent forms before children participate in social-media activities and before their children’s work or pictures appear online, and informing parents about how social media is being used in schools.
“In an increasingly digital world, we seek to provide our students with the opportunities that multi-media learning can provide—which is why we should allow and encourage the appropriate and accepted use of these powerful resources,” schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in an e-mail to principals.
The city in May will start providing training sessions for teachers and spotlight examples of the best uses of social media in classrooms. In laying down the guidelines, the department is trying to balance free-speech rights and the educational benefits of online learning with the dangers it sees in teachers and students getting too comfortable in less-traditional settings.
“In this digital era, the lines between professional and personal endeavors are sometimes blurred,” the guidelines say. Teachers should reject friend requests or other contact with students on their personal accounts, the guidelines say.
As the popularity of Facebook and Twitter has increased, so have the complaints about inappropriate student-teacher contact. The number of complaints received by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for schools that referenced Facebook leaped to 59 in 2010 from two in 2008, though they were not all substantiated.
After a series of arrests of education department employees on sexual-assault charges, Mr. Walcott spoke about how the department was reviewing its social-media policy and favored a total ban, but the department said the timing was unrelated. The guidelines have been in the works for about six months, department officials said.
Still, teachers have been disciplined for inappropriate comments, such as one who wrote that a student looked “sexy.”
There aren’t consequences for not abiding by the guidelines, as long as other department policies about appropriate conduct are followed, schools spokesman Matthew Mittenthal said. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303916904577376541510305510.html
Here is the document:
NYC Department of Education Social Media Guidelines
See, Social Media Rules Limit New York Student-Teacher Contact http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/nyregion/social-media-rules-for-nyc-school-staff-limits-contact-with-students.html
Children are not mature and adults can not expect the same level of maturity that most adults are presumed to have. Immature people, like kids, will take even harmless interactions and embellish and broadcast them to the world at large. The safest course of action for for teachers who want to be viewed as teacher professionals is to use common sense when using all social media and never put yourself in a situation with a student which can be viewed as compromising.
Teachers and others in responsible positions who deal with children must exercise common sense and not put themselves in situations which at the minimum will be awkward and which will lead to activity which is inappropriate.
Boundaries people. Boundaries.
If you are too stupid to use caution or you can’t exercise caution, society will begin to impose sanctions against those engaged in inappropriate activity with children. Engaging in inappropriate activity with children does not make you too sexy, it makes you too stupid!
Dr. Wilda says this about that ©
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