Time to do some thinking about you, your students - and Facebook...

Social media is ever-present in the news these days - not to mention ever-present in many of our lives.  I joined the Facebook wagon late - but have enjoyed re-connecting with high school and college friends.  Facebook has also been a great family photo sharing spot.  However, I have always felt a bit strange when students ask to "friend" me.  "To friend," in case you are unaware, is a verb indicating that one has asked another to become "friends" on Facebook (or MySpace, or.... etc.).  After ignoring my Facebook "friend request" page for many months in a true avoidance of the issue...I decided that my policy would be that I would do the following:

a) Never accept a "friend" request from a current or potential future student


b) Never request to "friend" a current, potential future or former student

c) Would accept "friends" who were graduated students with whom I had some significant and positive teacher-student interaction 

With respect to a) and b), I don't want my students to see my photos of family gatherings or my somewhat wacky running commentary on my favorite FoodNetwork show "Chopped."  Or, for that matter, photos of my new home.  It isn't too long ago that a local professor who had proffered a low grade opened her door to an irate and aggressive student.  I may be paranoid here, but still, better safe than sorry.  This takes some of the fun off of a post about Facebook, I do realize that. 


With respect c), I am always shocked when students who have failed out of my courses or who have been called on the carpet re: plagiarism show up in my "friend request" page. 

So, imagine my surprise, when logging on to Facebook, I saw that a friend from college (Jackie Cohen, who works as an Editor for Allfacebook.com, which should tell us something about our need to be thinking about the Facebook phenomenon) posted this article on Virginia's potential ban on Facebook friendships between students and teachers - albeit not at the undergraduate or graduate level - but still something to consider. Although this move appears to relate to sexual relationships between teachers and students, I still think it is a good discussion point.  The article also references, for example, the fact that students and teachers in some cases communicate via text message.  So,  I have posted the story in below...but would love to hear your thoughts on how Schools of Social Work should handle both the issue of Facebook and perhaps texting? 

Please share this blog posting with your social work academic colleagues - the blog is located at http://socialworktechnotes.blogspot.com/ and this will be the first posting (or in a few days, the second, and can be found in the blog archive if scrolling down does not work).

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Virginia May Ban Teachers From Facebooking With Students

Posted by Jackie Cohen on January 7th, 2011 7:44 PM

School teachers may be officially discouraged, if not completely banned, from communicating with students via Facebook, depending on the outcome of a January 13 vote by the Virginia Department of Education.


The state educational agency may set an example for others in the U.S. in requiring teachers to deny or ignore friend requests from students.

This would comply with a report called “Guidelines for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct and Abuse in Virginia Public Schools.”

The big picture: The Virginia Department of Education has dealt with of 120 cases of sexual misconduct between teachers and minors since 2000, according to The Daily Caller.

The Board’s proposal for reining in potential misconduct would prohibit teachers from sending text messages to students one-on-one and also disallow private communications via noprofessional social networking sites.

If a student sends a friend request to a Virginia public school employee via Facebook, not only would that recipient have to decline or disregard it, but also would have to report it to a direct supervisor. This would have to go in writing on the next business day and include the date, time and nature of the contact.

This is all still in the suggestion stage, as a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Education told The Daily Caller that she couldn’t “begin to speculate on how the board will vote.” If approved, then Virginia schools would be encouraged to adopt the policy.

This sounds like the kind of measure that parents would support in the interest of protecting their children. School officials probably like this too because of the cost of potential lawsuits related to anything resembling “sexual misconduct.” But I suspect students might have mixed reactions to this proposal, and free speech poponents might actively dislike the idea.

What’s your opinion on whether school employees should be able to communicate with students one-on-one via social networks and text messages? Do employers have the right to dictate how staff use Facebook even during off hours?

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