Slashdot Mirror
NYC Teachers Forbidden To "Friend" Students
betterunixthanunix writes "The New York City Department of Education has issued rules covering student-teacher interactions on social networking websites. Following numerous inappropriate relationships between students and teachers that began on social networking sites, the rules prohibit teachers from communicating with students using their 'personal' accounts, and requires parental consent before students can participate in social networking for educational purposes. The rules also state that teachers have no expectation of privacy online, and that principals and other officials will inspect teachers' profiles. Oddly, the rules do not address communication involving cell phones, which the Department of Education's own investigations have shown to be even more problematic."
Question in the subject.
Good. That behavior is unprofessional.
Would this still be illegal?
obviously the grandparent cares. don't be a tool, fool.
Freedom of association? Does that apply? Why do educators seem to love tossing out personal rights and freedoms? Between this, video cameras on laptops, insisting on viewing personal accounts, etc, it's just disheartening. Why not RFID tag them all or lock them in cells on their personal time?
Lots of grounds for a nice, expensive lawsuit here. Didn't another state just overturn a law like this?
Liberty in your lifetime
That was an issued raised here, in Georgia. Apparently you can not prevent parents from friending their children.
I hope they worked out the boundary cases (teachers that are parents of students, etc). But by and large I think this is a reasonable first step.
No, I'm not trying to deny the inevitable march into social media, but the issues with Facebook friending are:
- possibility of mixing work and personal lives of teachers - there are many things that teachers are expected to not do in and around students in school, including students into their private social media could create problems
- inability of schools to monitor relationships between students and teachers, hoping to detect, if not prevent them from happening
When I last read about this type of issue, the proposed law was very clear - is a school district runs a Facebook-like web site that includes the ability to monitor communications between employees (teachers) and customers (students) that was fine.
Why do teachers need to 'friend' under-age students of theirs? And no, arguing that this is how kids want to communicate with their teachers isn't good enough - there are too many alternatives for teachers to answer questions, distribute class work, etc.
Ken
Why don't you also ban teachers from talking to students if they see them in a mall or on the street? This smacks of some luddite shithead who dislikes Facebook deciding on behalf of other people who should use it and how they should use it.
The real issue is that people use their personal social networking accounts to broadcast inappropriate information to all their "friends" (who are really aquaintances). I'm afraid that's dangerous no matter what your profession. 200+ people do NOT need to know that you got drunk, took drugs, got laid, are depressed, like inappropriate jokes, hate work, that your kid vomited, or that your pet did something cute. Thing is it should be self-policed, not regulated.
So what happens if the Facebook profile is public? Is the teacher automatically fired? And if it's not public how the hell do you police this? How do you determine a breach has occurred? Do you force them to reveal their passwords to you regularly? Do you force all students? Are we talking NYC or China here? Perhaps you want teachers to stay off the social networks. Anti-social teachers are the new gold standard.
The sad thing is teachers who use social media for outreach, to post interesting things, to share education resources....they just get left out in the cold because they are drowned out by the hoard of immature ego-centric Facebook addicted teachers with no life who won't use any resource appropriately no matter how you govern it.
Collectively we all get what we deserve...and at the moment that is a society in steep decline.
It's stated on page 4 of the document, section E, article 1, just after the (a). The provision that communication over personal accounts may not occur between teachers and students is subject to an exception in the case of relatives.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I went to school in the 1960's, and obviously social networking and the internet were not a factor. I can't say there were any fewer problems then, but the major difference I see is that were not all afraid.
I'm sure there were unethical and inappropriate contacts between teachers and students then just as now, but it seems like if there was a problem, it was dealt with, but we didn't feel the need to live paranoid lives where everyone was a potential predator and rules about who could talk to who, when, and where had to be put all over the place. If you wanted to see a teacher 1:1 outside of school, you were free to do that. Some students did who were having family problems, sometimes with abusive parents, and they had no one else to turn to.
These days... everyone is afraid of their shadows. How the world has changed.
This collective punishment mentality is great.
Free lifelong healthcare, 3 months / year of paid vacation, tenure / unable to be fired, defined benefit pension courtesy of the productive members of society tax dollars.
Slashdotters who overwhelmingly reject the usefulness of Facebook and consider it a useless marketing platform that only idiots would use will communicate their furious anger that somebody would dare to tell someone they can't use Facebook however they wish.
....using social networks is still vain and silly.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
How does this square with the federal legislation wending its way through the system that would prevent employers from looking at social networking data of employees?
I'll say. My small community had a teacher busted for sexting a student. And when I was a kid, way back before the 'net and cell phones, there were rumors that certain teachers would give certain students "extra-curricular" attention. One teacher in our local district ended up marrying a student. It happened after the student graduated, but there were rumors that "stuff" was going on between them while the student was still in school.
I'm not sure technology has much to do with it: if teachers and students really want to hook up, they'll find a way.
If you're a teacher, what reason would you have to "friend" a child on Facebook? We would first have to assume a minor on FB is at least 13 years of age (per the TOS). So if you're teaching a teenager, why would you want to see all the stupid and annoying things that they're doing online? You're not their parent and you shouldn't have to step into that role if their mom or dad is absent and failing to live up to their responsibilities. There is no legitimate educational purpose for using Facebook. Teachers and students communicated perfectly well before it existed. It's called classroom time.
Maybe one reason is to see if your students are saying shit about you, but every teacher has had that happen to them at some point or another. It's part of the territory of teaching snot-nosed, self-entitled brats who think the world revolves around them. Being their "friend" won't change that.
Granted, I think it's also equally absurd to require a LAW to expressly prohibit such a thing, when so much of life is about learning how to exercise proper judgment, rather than having others decide for you what is appropriate and what is not. The bottom line is that no respectable teacher I know of would think doing such a thing is a good idea, and no student would want their teacher(s) to follow their online activities. The use of FB as a way to keep in contact with people you're not supposed to have that kind of contact with, is entirely bizarre, stupid, and reflects the extremely troubling and omnipresent nature of online social media. It's ridiculous that people think putting a record of their lives and their social connections in the hands of a corporation that profiteers from consistently violating your privacy is not only acceptable, but so overwhelmingly popular that they think nothing of teachers interacting with their underage students through it.
This is quite obviously unconstitutional
AccountKiller
I worked at a high school for a couple years and I wanted my job and the kids kept far apart. You friend your students and now they're a part of your social life whether you like it or not. Anything anyone else does on your list is now associated with your career as a teacher, and that could be extremely disruptive to your classroom. It annoyed me to no end to go out for a night on the town and see underage girls who the bouncers had allowed in (they'd scurry like cockroaches when they saw a teacher).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"rules" for teachers. I'm sorry, but until they become LAWS for teachers, that has been passed through a state congress and and the Gov. they can frankly go eff themselves. "teachers have no expectation of privacy online, and that principals and other officials will inspect teachers' profiles" They better only be talking about inspecting what is available to the public because they have absolutely NO right to ask for or acquisition your password or ask you to log in for them. If you're friends with them that's a different story. Teachers should have the same rights as the rest of us. If you have an issue with someones facebook, get yourself a warent.
The school itself could have a page and set up associated Group pages for the different classes (and Chess Club, etc) and have the appropriate teacher be the administrator of the individual group pages.
I still don't get why people are trying to legislate rules ban teachers from "friending" students on social media sites. Shouldn't that be between the teacher, the parents, and the student? Why can't teachers and students be friends?
We've had 'rules' like this in Ontario (at least my school board) since I joined high school. You have to wait until you leave the school to friend your teachers. They explain it as affecting the teachers opinion on a student (Or the other way around). At are school Facebook is unblocked and we have facebook groups for classes, but teachers make different accounts for those things.
Friending your students on Facebook makes your page public for all practical purposes. It's really easy, as a university professor, to find that your work and teaching life intrudes just a little too much on your private life, and I imagine the same is true for high school teachers, for example. I keep Facebook for real-life friends and a few colleagues. However, it is very important to students to have some form of contact with you that is outside the university environment. A little while ago, I broke down and set up a Linkedin profile, and my students are welcome to connect with me there.
Well... considering most facebook users (me included! D:) accept and send friend request from almost everyone even if they do not know the person, that they end up accepting/sending a friend request to a teacher seems rather unimportant. Might as well start by teaching people to not accept friend request by people they don't know and using privacy settings correctly (and beware of the consequences.
Now. Do not get me wrong. I am not in favour of harmful relationships between students and teachers (by harmful, well, you intend what you want by that). I am also aware for such relationships it is needed at least two willing parties (unless somebody is forcing somebody else, in which case it is another case). But I am not in favour of "just because I decided to be a formal teacher" I can't use social networks like everybody else. Please, do note the use of "formal". Your mother teaches you things. You learn from your friends. Some may even learn from a stranger in a bar whom they just happened to meet by chance. What about the young adults that explain math (and other subjects) to teenagers for a bit of cash? Of course, they don't fit in the definition of teacher that teaches in a school (thus why the "formal teacher"). My point is, formal teachers - unlike most like to think - are humans who have their own problems, who work like everybody else (who has a job). The only difference is that their job is to pass on knowledge from their generation to the next one. Sure, it'd be bad for what's supposed to be the role model of your kids (wait, you're supposed to be the role model of your kids!!!!!!!) doing some rather questionable actions (but smoking is alright, because students already do it anyway), but then as a human you should NEVER engage in such behaviour in front of kids, or anyone, since you never know when they might be passing by.
I just find this rather unfair for teachers, considering they already have to put up with today's kids and get around putting something in their heads. And going beyond the teacher profession, you should also prevent medical doctors from friending patients. I mean, a rather large number of professions would need such restrictions.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
do this too why is this suddenly news? MCPS definitely has rules about this. Also @ all the people saying "why would you want to": Maybe you personally wouldn't, but I know teachers that friend students. They're not gonna go and friend every student they have but I'm a student aid and friends with my teacher on facebook and it's helpful for both of us, he's a physics teacher and every now and then he'll post cool physics stuff or I'll link him to stuff. He's friends with some other people too it's not a huge deal but I can see why they don't want teachers to do it. If they started actually punishing them that'd be different, but as far as telling them not to that makes sense.
These are *rules* and *guidelines* written by an employer for their employees. Tons of workplaces have rules/guidelines against certain types of fraternization. I wouldn't want my kids teacher(s) being "friends" with them online anymore than I would want them to go hang out at the mall together. Some relationships should stay "professional" and teacher student is one of them.
Other states have tried this and it was challenged and ruled unconstitutional, or impolite, or in violation of the Temporal Prime Directive or something like that. When are they going to learn that people have private lives and they just can not inject their rules into every aspect of those lives. Also, my daughter (high school Senior) has several of her teachers on her Facebook friends list and I am totally cool with this. For one, the teachers generally use the lists to get school messages out to the students, reminders of practices etc. And the up side is that they are visible to me. I would much prefer that they post to her Facebook then have them texting her.
The grandparent can't even spell Facebook, and thinks that that big blue E is the Intermonet Tube.
why was this guy moded troll they do get healthcare, 3 months of paid vacation and tenure what other job has tenure? and because of unions if they have been employed long enough it is impossible to fire a teacher unless you fire every teacher that has been employed after them. that was a problem they had at my old high school they had several bad teachers that they could not fire because they would have fir everyone else firs because their union contracts stipulated it. and most teacher do work for public schools which are paid for with tax dollars. where was this guy wrong?
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
is subject to an exception in the case of relatives.
So is it a sold defense that both religion and science believe we all have the same family tree and there for are all related? i know one half of my family tree is exceptionally wide and we can follow it back ~150 years and many generation, and they are all "related"..
i know i'm being nit picky by why not when you have things like this that try to have a work place govern the personal lives of people outside work.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Actually, if I were a teacher, I think I'd be OK with this. If you friend a few of your students, then you'd have to friend all of them in order to avoid the appearance of favoritism, and if other teachers were doing it there would be pressure to do it yourself as well. So, instead of having to say, "No, you can't be my friend," you can simply cite the law.
In what world do you live in where teachers in NYC get lifelong healthcare or tenure? They can be "fired" at the drop of a hat simply by not renewing their contract. I have no idea where this image of teachers comes from. Also, pensions don't exist for the majority of new teachers. Most of this information is 20 years out of date.
Forgive my ignorance as I WILL NOT use facebook (until it becomes a felony not to).
1. Aren't you supposed to be of age to use social networks?
2. Aren't you only allowed one account?
3. Aren't you forbidden from sharing your logon info? Its in the terms of use.
All the conjecture, rules, and laws in the world do NOTHING if there is no enforcement.
There's a very easy rebuttal to the Libertarian argument that government employees' personal lives shouldn't be regulated at least a little: it affects the teachers' professional relationships with their students and how they interact with them. Wouldn't you want the same policies applied to politicians to prevent them from developing relationships with that one nice guy who just so happens to be a lobbyist for a major kitten-puppy-bunny murder conglomerate? The potential for corruption is somewhat reduced in the case of a teacher with students, but educators are still the public face of the school and can destroy its reputation (and budget) by such misbehaviour. Any highly interpersonal job with such high visibility should demand some professionalism in its employees' conduct.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
You don't have to be competent or very smart!
I think that is the major selling point that draws people into teaching...at least, assuming that my teachers constitute a representative sample.
Unfortunately, this is not something should have to be governed in the first place.
Teachers can not be friends with students. They have to be leaders and educators, not friends. There are numerous other examples of hierarchical structures where inter-hierarchy friendship is generally... a bad idea.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
So your parental instincts kick in, and all those little cues the media has given you about the dangers that await your daughter if she so much as leaves your home have come to define your reality.
Here is what I will grant you: pedophiles do exist. Sometimes teachers are pedophiles, and they use their position of power to take advantage of their victims. Fortunately, that is not a very common situation, despite what the news media tells you, and most teachers really do care about their students (in an appropriate way).
Unfortunately, the moral panic of the 1980s -- which resulted in the imprisonment of at least hundreds of innocent people, if not more -- has not entirely subsided.
Palm trees and 8
Does Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ count as a "social network" according to the New York City Department of Education?
-- Terry
The rules also state that teachers have no expectation of privacy online, and that principals and other officials will inspect teachers' profiles.
Does this mean that teachers will be required to accept friend requests from principals or other superior school officials so they can inspect their Facebook profiles and examine their friends lists? I understand having no expectation of privacy online as far as publicly posted material goes, but will teachers be required to give their superiors special access? For my own Facebook profile, if you're not a friend, all you can see is my name and profile pic, nothing else. I'm curious if teachers would be required to make more available to their superiors under this rule.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
And that doesn't apply to just teachers - your right the responsibility for professionalism applies to everyone, teachers, politicians, doctors, police, you, me, every single person.
But at what point to we need to make rules/laws and punish people? Normally the limit is placed at the point where the person crosses the line and has legitimacy done something wrong, but i feel in this case you may have far less than 1% of the time that this action is inappropriate, and therefor they are at the point of punishing people for doing something that isn't wrong. Now i saw there is wording for it being on a "personal" account vs a "official" account, and in that respect i might agree with this. It is along the same lines as a personal/corporate e-mail and the ethical behavior of using them. But even then the problem i see is the every legit and not unprofessional friendships that can form between students and teachers, hell i ended up going to work for one of them for a short bit and i know people that where their students that still do 15 years later.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Yes god forbid that they should not be indoctrinated into the hierarchical order. They might get to thinking that all men are equal or some other such stupidity. And it would be a truly terrible thing if a younger person develops a friendship with a more mature person and as a result they picked up some of the maturity themselves.
Provided these relationships are not secret, where is the harm? If you do not trust students and teachers to behave responsibly then what do you see happening when the world is run by the students that have been taught by those teachers. If you think you can't trust anybody to act responsibly and think that more authority is the answer to this then who do you envisage administering this authority and why do you think you can trust them any more than anyone else?
Generally you need to police behaviour in two cases: (a) when the people being hired have no sense of social responsibility or (b) when the hierarchy over their heads is so oppressive, bureaucratic, and unloved that they resent it and do not believe the importance of its image exceeds their desires. Guess which one is more likely to apply to people who deliberately chose to enter a career that's basically nothing but social responsibility?
Predictably, this describes almost everything in the US.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
"social responsibility" is such an appeal to popularity.
I wish you hadn't posted AC, it's not often you find people with common sense posting..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
and everyone from the teacher unions to the ACLU started to file law suits until it was repealed. I work for a Missouri school district IT department and this is a big issue right now. The two biggest issues is what counts a social networking site, a lot of the web classroom programs share social networking aspects. The other issue is it is impossible to enforce unless someone rats them out or its discovered after the teacher did something else.
Maybe the bias is different, but it's still a social network.
The actual guidelines for personal social media are far too strict.
The guidelines say no DOE employee my have any social media contact with any DOE student who they are not related to. This effectively means that ALL DOE employees may not user personal accounts to communicate on social media sites with ANY student under 18 living in their district boundaries.
So, if you're a kindergarten teacher with a 17 year old son, it is not appropriate to use social media to (for instance) plan a birthday party for your son.
While I understand why the district might want the rule to be so broad (read: simplicity and lawsuits), it is so broad as to be nearly meaningless, and will likely be ignored in many cases where it shouldn't be. Much more sensible would have been guidelines such as:
"It is inappropriate to use personal social media to communicate with any student for which the employee has a direct supervisory role or has had a direct supervisory role in the preceding two(2) academic years. For example, teachers may not use personal social media to communicate with their students or students of other teachers in their teaching team. School administrative employees may not use personal social media to communicate with students who attend their school. It is strongly recommended that any DOE employee using personal social media to communicate with a student not subject to the above guidelines receive prior consent from the student's parent or guardian and review their communication with the student's parent or guardian regularly."
While my set of guidelines seems strict, it should be sufficient as the consent and review provisions did not specify "in writing" and so can be done verbally. It also isn't so broad as to outlaw usage that is clearly reasonable. More importantly, such rules are more likely to be followed when it appears that the administrators made an attempt to really codify the appropriate and inappropriate uses, and didn't just take a "personal use of social media is evil" stance.
First you say:
The guidelines say no DOE employee my have any social media contact with any DOE student who they are not related to.
Then you say:
So, if you're a kindergarten teacher with a 17 year old son, it is not appropriate to use social media to (for instance) plan a birthday party for your son.
Which leaves me questioning my reading comprehension, or yours.
Care to try again?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Good article. Thoughts? visit www.shouldteachersandstudentsbefacebookfriends.com.
The part you're missing is "Hey, do you want to come to your classmate's birthday? Oh wait, you can't, because I'm a teacher at another school."
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
...or rather, "oh wait, I can't invite you."
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Yup, missed the word Invite, saw the word Plan.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It's an appeal to evolutionary success—which is a perfectly valid thing to appeal to. Good education is not bread and circuses by any stretch of the imagination; it prevents that.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Yeah, there's the trick. Planning includes inviting. Probably a minor cultural difference in there.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Parents don't trust these teachers to not molest their children through the internet, yet they leave their children in classrooms physically inches away from these teachers for hours 5 days a week. If you do not trust these people completely, why would you leave your child with them?!
Why is a teacher allowed in adult only places? That is probably not allow according to the rules.
Not for teachers working for 20 years already. Sorry about maybe you or your friends' budding teaching career.
It's a social responsibility for teachers to friend their students on Facebook. There. Since I used the term "social responsibility," all of your arguments have been completely defeated. Right?
Huh? Education of children is a social responsibility because without someone being responsible for it, society would collapse. Other social responsibilities include helping those in need, defending from invaders, and keeping living and working areas from overflowing with trash. All of these tasks (well, garbage collection less so) bestow trust on the individuals carrying them out (the ability to warp childrens' minds, resources to distribute to the poor, weapons to fend off enemies, the means to deposit garbage at a given location, etc.) The only alternative to trusting these people to carry out their duties altruistically (or, according to Objectivism, for the benefit of their society) is to mandate that they must not misuse their positions for personal or other reasons.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Nothing about the word pedophile implies criminal activity. Therefore pedophiles don't have victims. Rapists and molesters have victims.
I love you.
I read it to mean that it would be against the rules to contact your son's friends via your personal account.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Go ahead and make social networks off-limits to teaching staff. The few teachers that are willing to have inappropriate relationships with their students are going to stop, because hey, everyone follows the rules, right?
On a separate note, I coach football with athletes at the high school level. If I couldn't talk to them over Facebook, then we'd be unable to reschedule a practice, give directions to the next game, etc. I'd be happy to set up a mailing list but the kids refuse to use anything other than Facebook. It is an essential medium, even if some of us consider it a necessary evil.
The unpleasant alternative is to expect 58 text messages the next time it rains, and have to respond to each and every one separately. Not looking forward to it; and texting students directly via a private channel would be more problematic than discussing as part of a public group...
What problem are we trying to solve, again?
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
Okay.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
These are guidelines, rather than rules, and I suspect they reflect existing policies at individual schools. Unifying standards between institutions is a good thing.
Social media can be put to constructive use through formal pages, groups and so on (as reflected by the guidance) but befriending students online is really not very professional.
Child protection guidelines are fundamentally there to protect children, yes, but let's not forget that they are as much about protecting adults from allegations made by nefarious (or simply misunderstanding) kids by making it difficult for teachers to put themselves in compromising positions.
It's partly for this reason that schools and youth organisations have internal rules and regulations that say, for example, that driving a student home on your own is something you really shouldn't plan to do. Guidance covering responsible use of the Internet is just an extension to this
That said, I think that telling teachers to have "no expectation of privacy" really oversteps the mark.
I suspect it was the section where he implied that teachers are not productive members of society, and that they dont also pay taxes.
The anti union rhetoric in your post gives away your viewpoint, by the way.
If the school sees value in their Faculty having contact with their students on social networking sites then the school needs official presence on the social networking sites. I dont know if it is possible for a teacher to have, say, their own personal account, and for them also to have the use of an official, monitorable, account tied to their school, and representing the position they hold at the school. the result would be that for example an English department teacher would have an official English teacher #3 (maybe give them better titles than that, cant think of one without more coffee) account.
My rationale for this runs thus: Having their tutors available on the media with which the children interact the most and the freest would mean that their teachers are much more approachable/available to assist in that parts of their education or lives which may need the most assistance. Also, this would be a two way street, and teachers would be able to use the official account that they have been assigned to communicate to their pupils en masse or individually as required whilst maintaining a both a safeguard against abuse, and a firewall between the teachers' private lives and circle of social contacts, and their pupils. Using the school's own website for this would not be as beneficial as the kids won't already be acclimatised to using that.
and a nonlow uid is not the sign of being wet behind the ears. Its not like low uid bigotry is anything new on slashdot however...
I agree on the usefulness of Failbook, however The Kids are into it nowadays. The Kids are in fact a teacher's job, so the issue is relevant.
You CAN do both!
however there are consequences for both, too. YMMV of course, and I dont think that scat fetishists are entirely precluded from becoming teachers...
yeah? I have a really easy rebuttal to your "rebuttal:" FUCK YOU.
no. stay the FUCK out of my life.
Some German schools are experimenting with the (even mandatory) inclusion of social networks for teachers, using a separate "Teacher-X" account on facebook. Pupils are reacting positively, as they have an incentive to stay critical on what to upload/ write online. Also the teacher is able to provide personal help in RL, if pupils ask for it.
German article:
http://www.focus.de/digital/computer/schulen-feature-wie-bei-facebook-lehrer-mit-schuelern-umgehen_aid_745348.html
A couple of teachers who have run into students on the street ended up in improper relationships with them, so the New York City Department of Education is preparing to ban teachers from using any sidewalks which are also used by students.
-deane
A parent who is a parent is snoopy enough to know everything their kid does online, everyone they talk to on a phone, knows where they are at all times and what is in their sock drawer. Children have no expectation of privacy. You get that as an adult if you're not stupid.
A parent who is a parent will protect their offspring from predators above and beyond intrusive laws that encourage predators to thrive. Oops, we're talking about New York here...well, we have a perfect example of what happens when an entire local culture is too stupid to own handguns, too liberal to fight and too self absorbed to raise their own children, done by a village or somesuch irresponsible garbage. Watch 5 minutes, you can clearly see Darwin is right.
"Unfortunately, this is not something should have to be governed in the first place." -- i_ate_god
We shouldn't need to have more authority, there should be some common sense.
And anyways, why would you trust them? Or anyone else? Human beings are human beings, and are more than capable of making irresponsible, irrational decisions. It's part of what makes humanity what it is. Thus, when you have a group of people whose fate rests in the hands of their leader (soldiers -> captain, students -> teacher, employees -> boss, so on and so forth), then when members of that group start developing personal relationships with that leader, platonic or otherwise, it has a strong chance to negatively affect the rest of the group (preferential treatment), because that's how humans are.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Thank god inappropriate relationships never occurred pre-facebook. All we have to do is get back to the good old days....
3 months of paid vacation
Maybe it's different in other states, but around here teachers aren't paid for summer vacation. A part of your monthly salary is socked away into an account, and you draw upon that during the hot months.
Granted, it works out to more or less the same thing... except that it means that a teacher's "monthly salary" looks about 33% higher than it actually is.
Also tenure prevents teachers from being fired -at will-; they can still be fired due to malfeasance like any other teacher.
so a teacher could have a SCHOOL account (which is tapped logged and filed) and could friend any students they wanted to
So John Smith could have an account John Smith (his personal account) and also have a SCHOOL account John SmithRRHS were he friends all of his students (and the admins and such).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
A teacher and student still at the same are not appropriate friends until either leaves the school.
Why not have a page monitored by the school board, then students could log on and chat with appropriately appointed staff to help the kids. everything on the site would be monitored and controlled by the school board. When I was a fire service instructor one of the things I drove into the heads of my students "Utilize your resources" in other words use everything you have at hand to accomplish the task. "Embrace the Technology" and utilize your resources, if someone is going to give you a portal to help students why wouldn't you use it.
Im Just Sayin
That is all. Carry on.
Keep on helicoptering, the liberals love it when you raise kids who cry and scream for mommy to come whenever they have the slightest problem, once they turn 18 mommy government will answer their calls!
NYC DOE teachers become eligible for lifelong pensions after 5 years of service and become fully vested at 8 (I believe). They also receive healthcare and tax-deferred annuity plans (essentially a glorified savings account). Finally, it's easy to get fired if you're new but the UFT (United Federation of Teachers) makes it VERY hard to fire someone that's tenured. (Lots and lots of paperwork and process that nobody wants to do.) This is actually one of the biggest talking points in the continuous performance and accountability debates going on in the DOE.
Exactly. You can't use social media to invite the friends to the party, or to discuss the party in any way.
The rules as stated are ridiculous. They sound okay until you realize that teachers are also parents, and so things that are inappropriate in their role as a teacher may be appropriate in their role as a parent. A teacher shouldn't use personal e-mail or social media to do their job (i.e. communicate with their current students.) At the same time, it is completely appropriate to use personal e-mail or personal social media to communicate with their child or their child's friends.
This is the same as it being generally inappropriate to, as a teacher, invite students to your house, but it is perfectly appropriate to, as a parent, invite your child's friends to your house on behalf of your child.
The school district can tell the difference for real-world events, but has the common fallacy of "if it happens on the internet, it must be a dramatically greater risk for evil."
I hate to break it to you, but that mentality is not evolutionary successful. Humans have evolved to become the dominant organism on this planet. Our ability to balance personal and social needs is what has gotten us here. And because there will always be people who take more than they give, at least some of that social obligation will have to be forced on people through contracts and laws. Making people behave responsibility if they have been trusted with important duties—such as education—is one of the most important demands people should place on their governments and on each other.
So, sure: if you don't want people to interfere with your life, simply stay far, far away from theirs. This solution works equally well for societal and interpersonal dilemmas. It's not all bad; maybe you'll come back later with something more to contribute.
That's not to say laws and policies don't overdo things, but this is not exactly an example of that; it's one of the most basic and important duties of a society to control its governments' representatives. Perhaps this principle doesn't manifest perfectly in the literal text of this policy, but it could've been a lot worse, and now that the regulation is on the books it can be debated and revised to make it a better tool. Save your ire for the really stupid things, like surveillance and oil wars. This is essentially an anti-corruption law, scaled down. Its purpose is to keep some of the most powerful people in our society from affecting some of the most vulnerable. It's exactly the kind of policy that should be applied to politicians to prevent them from interacting with lobbyists.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
this isn't the military. the abuse potential for conflicts of interest is negligible in the teacher/student relationship compared to the military, or business. in the military and business worlds, the relationship is boss/flunky. teacher/student relationships are more like mentor/apprentice (or should be), and so friendship bonds are actually desirable -- not neutral or detrimental. if we were using cooperative education vs competitive, we wouldn't even be talking about this. sexual relationships between students are already banned, so this anti-friendship law is just a bit too much law of moses. that right there should be everyone's first clue that the purpose of this law has little to do with its name, like most laws. laws more often do the opposite of what they were voted in to do.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT