Trust me, as much as being friends with parents may have its benefits, it is not a good idea:
Jill Schulman-Riemer has taught nursery through third grade, and is currently a private tutor and educational consultant in New York City. She says teachers and parents should keep their distance outside of the classroom, particularly online.
The trouble goes both ways, she warns. “Parents friending teachers and teachers friending parents can be a slippery slope. You put a lot of trust in your children’s teachers. We all need to stay in our professional roles with each other, and Facebook just isn’t a place for that.”
“Talk to them off line,” Schulman-Riemer advises. “Don’t use email or Facebook messenger. Try an actual face-to-face conversation. Explain that, of course, you’re always happy to talk to a parent about their child or anything school-related, but your policy is that you don’t friend parents on Facebook, and you prefer in-person conversations.”
Sure, friending your kid’s teacher may sound like a nice way to have a more personal connection with someone who’s an important part of your family’s daily life. But information on people’s Facebook pages can easily be misread or blown out of proportion. And while teachers recognize that they’re being judged on student performance and how they present themselves in the classroom, they shouldn’t be held accountable for old college pictures, or late-night comments posted on their timeline after someone’s bachelorette party.
If you go out and friend a teacher on Facebook, or accept their friend request, you do so at your own risk, says Carrie Mize, who’s been on both sides of the fence, as a parent of three young children, and a teacher of pre-school and elementary grades in Michigan, Virginia, and Connecticut.
“If you choose to open up the personal side of things, you have to understand that it’s their personal life and you may see things you don’t like,” She says. “A teacher’s Facebook page doesn’t have anything to do with your child. The teacher doesn’t have their teacher hat on, and if you see something inappropriate, you just have to let it go.”
Click on the link to read Don’t Even Try to Huminise James Holmes
Click on the link to read Teachers Who Rely on Free Speech Shouldn’t be Teachers
Click on the link to read Facebook’s Age Restictions are a Joke
Click on the link to read Facebook and Child Exploitation
Tags: Education, facebook, Facebook friend with parents, Facebook friend with students, Facebook friends with teachers, friend a teacher on Facebook, Jill Schulman-Riemer, Parents and Teachers Should Not Be Facebook Friends, Parents friending teachers and teachers friending parents, social media, teachers and parents should keep their distance outside of the classroom
Topical Teaching 
Leave a Reply