School District Tells Teachers to 'Unfriend' Students
A school district in the State of Florida has instructed teachers to unfriend any students across all their social networks. The reason is the tendency for inappropriate behavior to inadvertently take place. The 2010-2011 Lee County guidelines for the first time outlined specifically what sort of behavior is expected when it comes to teachers and their social networking behavior.
"It is inappropriate for employees to communicate, regardless of the reason, with current students enrolled in the district on any public social networking website," the guidelines said. "This includes becoming 'friends' or allowing students access to personal web pages for communication reasons."
While social networking is becoming more commonplace, teachers around the country use it to communicate with their students. However, this is the same network they are using to post pictures of bachelor parties and other adult behavior. Basically, teachers should remain just teachers. Their humanity should be limited to the classroom. When students get a good view of their private lives, teachers become less than the respected head of the classroom; they become too human to be respected on the student - teacher level.
Think about when you went to school, did you know anything about your teacher? Would you want to? Would it have changed your view? That is what the Lee County administrators are worried about as well, taking this proactive action - the first in the nation - to keep students out of the private lives of teachers. As well, this will keep teachers out of the private lives of students, where they don't belong either. The two worlds need to remain separate, that's for sure.
As for communicating with students, e-mail is still the safe and preferred methods and many primary schools have in-house e-mail and social systems to handle communications, such as Angel Web. Angel Web is a communication tool that is in place in many schools from elementary to college.
From Joseph Donzelli, director of communications and printing services at Lee County Public Schools, "There are other ways to reach out to students that doesn’t involve social networking. Teachers should work with their school’s Webmaster to set up Web pages where people can interact and discuss projects and events."
Every county should enact this policy if they want to keep their teachers - and students - out of trouble when it comes to social networking.
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