TheApple

As so many teachers are becoming tech savvy, students are bound to find you on Facebook or MySpace. Do you accept friend requests from your students? Why or why not?

Yes, I do add students as friends on my Facebook account.  I never look for them myself and make a friend request to them, but if they make a friend request for me from their accounts, I add them.  I do not see a problem with it at all.  I, however, am speaking froma perspective of someone who barely uses things like Facebook and MySpace.  The only reason I have accounts on either of them anyway is simply just because that is "the thing" to do.  I probably make updates of my pages three or four times a year with general comments about myself - for example: "For the last three months I have been teaching in Honduras, have traveled to a sulfur hot spring in Guatemala, and have discovered that I love Central American food."  It does not bother me if my students know I have a "Facebook friend" from Malaysia, have seen a picture of me shirtless wearing perfectly normal and acceptable knee-length swim suit shorts while swimming at a lake, and know that one of my favorite movies is the original "Startgate" (the original movie from the '90s - just for the record....not the series that are on TV these days).

As a retired teacher, I have come across some former students on Facebook who have asked to be a Friend. I have accepted all offers. However, I also reserve the right to un-Friend them if their comments are not acceptable to me. If I were a teacher, I probably would follow the same policy. Incidently, I don't add anything on Facebook that I would be afraid if it appeared on the front page of the Daily News (a NYC tabloid).

As for agaeber's comments...I'm a little annoyed with the comment "puts you at their level." If you act in an immature manner, you are at their level. However, If you act as an adult they will treat you that way. Facebook is the same as your classroom, if you deserve respect you will get it. Students (at least the ones I've known in NYC) don't respect teachers...they respect individuals. Some happen to be teachers.

agraeber says ...

I would never add a student as a friend it is unprofessional, it is crossing a boundary and it opens a teacher upto any kind of speculation.  Adding a student as a friend puts you at their level, when as the teacher you need to retain respect and be an authority figure.  To me, adding a student as a friend sends the wrong message and just confuses everyone.  Anymore, one can never be too safe or too professional.   

Me, not so much. I am a very private person...stop laughing... I really am. TheMadman might not mind students seeing him shirtless, but I'd mind if my students saw me shirtless. haha Seriously though, I haven't got much to hide on facebbook, etc. but I would like to avoid any problems with unstable students, stalkers, and weirdos in general. (And we do have a bunch of them at this site).   I prefer to keep students out of my personal business so no, I would not add them. It doesn't matter to me that all of my students are adult,  I don't call them or contact them in anyway outside of school, I don't hangout with them, and I don't date them. Heck, I don't even want to shop in the same stores. I have nothing against anyone else that does (as long as everything is kept on a professional level). I might have a problem with a teacher contacting my child regularly outside of school. I'd be all over that!

Being a teacher is not something that is second nature to me so I feel like I go into 'teacher mode' when I clock in, and as soon as I clock out, I go into 'real me' mode. It's all an act. When I'm in 'real me' mode, I hope students, staff and the like are no where around 'cause it ain't pretty!  I'm guessing for some, there is no 'real me' mode, they are in 'teacher mode' all the time.  So that's why they couldn't care less what students think. WYSIWYG

Friends on FB are going to day things about you that you may not want your students to see. You have no control of that. I protect myself on FB. No one can find me. I have to find them. Not that I am hiding anything, but my inforamtion is personal and I'd like to keep it that way.

I think you can communicate with the students via a seperate parent approved blog site. I don't think FB or MySpace is the place to "explore" one another.

I think it would be wise for school districts to start implementing the code for social networking inside and outside of school. I can see it getting out of hand if rules are not implemented immediately. I think the school should encourage FB pages. My church has several. It's a great way to communicate with like-minded individuals, but having someone 'monitor' the site, like a media specialist would be important. 

I agree with you, sanmccarron.  Those are the points I was trying to make in my first post.  I like how you said that Facebook is "as public as a supermarket".  YES!  The way I see it, not just Facebook, but the Internet in general.  Like joelheffner put it, don't post anything you wouldn't want to appear in the paper.  The Internet, as I see it, is very similar to a regular hardcopy newspaper.  I would not be ashamed to write an editorial (depending on the topic, of course), submit it to the press to be published, and then even take it to school and discuss it with fellow staff and students.  Same with using Facebook or any other Internet site.  The Internet is not a place to hide, it is a very, very public place.  If you have some tid bit of information about yourself that you would not want published in the newspaper, don't put it on the Internet either.

My students know that I don't add current students as friends on social networks and that they should use the class web page on Blackboard or the one I've set up on .Ning for students. I won't refuse a previous student as a Facebook friend, but I certainly don't look for them.

Since I teach at community college and many of my students are returning adults, my situation is a little different from that of say, a male teacher who teaches in a high school and may be perceived as flirting if he's too friendly. My previous students who are friends are mostly  English as a Second Language students. Some found me because I use my g-mail account for back-up when college servers crash, so I was in their contact lists.  I don't do anything embarrassing in public ;) so I'm not worried, though some of my long-time friends might wonder that I have friends who are passionately interested in dirt bike racing, for instance. Then again, that could be one of my nephews, and I don't object to other people's pastimes, as long as they're morally decent.  

I like Matejasmolar's idea of suggesting book titles to students who want to be friends. I will also say that my students teach me about subjects I would not otherwise encounter. "Jabberwocky," for instance, is a poem by Lewis Carroll, as far as I knew, until last week, when one of my hip-hop lovers acted flabbergasted that I could know about the hip-hop group by the same name (which, of course, I didn't, until then). I had the opportunity to enlighten my class about the source of the group's name and to share the wonderful John Tenniel artwork that appeared in the first editions of Through the Looking Glass. Tenniel's "Jabberwok" is a clothed dragon of curiously mixed British and Hong Kong cultural influences.

 Dear JoannaPLT,

Ah, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" - one of my favorites. I can still recall my intro to it. I was working part-time for the A/V department at university, and I got to show the film. Almost the entire audience came dressed up in the costumes of their favorite characters, and many got up on stage in front of the screen to lip-sync the dialogue and songs. What a hoot!

My students are all in college, or not, by now.  I hear from two of them occasionally.  A couple years ago one of them nominated me for "Who's Who in American Teachers"... the respect is mutual.  I suppose it would be okay for me to accept one of them as a 'friend'... because I do feel warm and friendly toward them, afterall I was with most of them from elementary school through high school, we're like family (their parents, too).... but, I wonder if I am not somewhat naieve about on-line stalkers, etc. 

Here is something most people don't know about me:   I've been robbed 33 times (home-car-school) and had my identity stolen once.  So, I shouldn't be so 'un-suspecting' as I am... yet, I find it difficult to see the world as dark and cold as some see it...even though the opportunity is certainly there... 

...does it all boil down to whether or not we 'trust' our students?   

 I'd go with trust, as well - but trust seasoned with a strong dose of caution and care.

 Dear Cindyx3,

Well,  it often comes experience more than with age. As a geezer myself, I know a lot of other geezers who don't seem to have learned much simply by aging. And even experience doesn't always help. Experience is a great teacher, but we (or at least I, anyway) are not always the best students.

Yes, the kids always want to know more about you.  The kids at my schools also wanted to be close to me...standing close, hold my hand, I suspect that some of those little girls would even have wanted to climb on my lap, if I'd have allowed that... but I didn't.  I am a warm and affectionate person, but there are teacher-boundaries that need to be set and maintained.  With the very little ones (1st grade) I have to admit I did give them hugs and pats on the back ... mostly at the end of the school day when we were going home... in the culture where I lived and taught even the parents would give me hugs. 

But, back to the question: No, I would most likely not be-friend my students on an on-line social network...unless they were already grown-up and requesting my friendship.

I understand the reward but to me the risk is too great.  I feel there sould be a

gap between the we and they. If not where would we be.  some relationships

would be perverted and a lot more of the seattle teacher and her student who

later became her husband would creep up and hurt all of us in the end.