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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."
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?
It's obviously disgusting and deviant that the teacher is boffing the kid's parent. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
People should get fired over this. It's almost as bad as teaching evolution.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Welcome to the USA. Just because only an idiot would want to doesn't mean that those same idiots shouldn't be allowed to.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
But it's a medium that the kids use, so if a teacher wants to effectively communicate them it seems like an obvious choice.
They would be violations of school policy, not misdemeanors / felonies.
Well, that depends a lot on what they mean by "principals and other officials will inspect teachers' profiles."
If they just look at the profile, fine, whatever.
If they log in AS the profile, there's a problem: everyone on that teacher's friend list who has a non-public profile is now visible, and accessing their friends-only profile info under that circumstance is, potentially, a federal crime.
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.
Read the WSJ's publication of the actual policy. It essentially prohibits teachers from actively using the internet except in a professionally approved setting, unless they can be certain that their privacy (anonymity) is assured.
It's not just about Facebook. If you're a teacher and you have a blog (even one you intended to be anonymous) and you students comment on it you could face disciplinary action. The way it's worded even an unauthorized slashdot post could be construed as inappropriate contact if a student posts in the same thread and knows the teacher's handle.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Does Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ count as a "social network" according to the New York City Department of Education?
-- Terry
Mr. Justin, is that you?
Can I get a three day extension on my final project?
No. You will be deducted one letter grade for each hour your project is late. Two if I'm in a bad mood.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
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?
Good. That behavior is unprofessional.
No, it's not unprofessional. I'm guessing you didn't grow up at the end of the era where having teachers over for dinner was common. Didn't end all that long ago, just back in the 90's. Most of my favorite teachers came over on my invite, with the permission of my parents.
I'm still in touch with a couple of them, about half of them are dead. But my mechanics, science and history teachers? When I'm back in the americas they still come over to visit, and hear about my travels and take things that I've brought or pictures or other tidbits to show their classes. Hell I've spoken infront of their classes in the last 3 years, and I'm nobody important, just someone who has a fascination with learning and traveling.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
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?!
Right. Let's create a separate "kids" world. The kids-world will have no swearing, no nudity, no death, no kissing, no money-problems, no divorces. Let's do our level best to shut our kids in these fictional, boring, sterile, pink-plastic worlds, where they can grow up dealing as little as possible with the real world.
Then, once they hit some magical age, 14 or 18 or whatever, let's open the floodgates and assume they're now well-prepared to deal with a world we've done our level best to ensure they've learnt nothing about.
On second thought, let's not do that. Instead, let's be guides and teachers to the real world. Let's try to explain in language a child can understand, rather than try to hide.
He's a teacher, not a priest...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!