Communicating with students in this day and age is very new and exciting. What I fear is that too many of us will become too friendly and not know where to draw the lines. I partake in social media sites but not under my professional name. When I discovered that perspective employers and schools look into your Facebook and Instagram accounts, I went into hiding, lol. The first thing I thought of is, when I am a teacher how my students will view this. I think having so many different lines of communication in order to reach your student’s is great, and meeting them where they are will also help you reach them. You have to know that your student’s should not see you as a “person” and always view you as their teacher. I fear, students will start to loose respect for you if you start to associate you as one of their friends.
With that out of the way, having different avenues to reach your students is vital to reaching students who are not as outgoing in the classroom. Giving parent’s different ways to communicate with you is also vital to your relationship with them. If a parent has a concern, they might not always be available during your office hours or during the school day. Being able to send an email is important to keep the lines of communication open. You should also have a disclaimer that all communication sent and received from your school account is monitored and viewed for safety purposes. You should also save all email correspondence. This can save you later if something comes up. In this day and age many parents do not attend parent teacher conferences, and this may seem like more work on the teacher’s behalf, but at least being available via email is better then not communicating with the parent’s altogether.
Another issue we discuss in our English skills and techniques class is how to get the students to write more. Surprisingly the students write everyday, all day. they do it via text message, email, going to websites, searching for topics in Google, on Facebook, on Twitter and who knows where else. The issue is getting them to write in the class. Some suggested in my class to use these sites for our advantage. You can actually set up twitter accounts and do a time line project with the social media site. The issue is if we find this ethical or not? Are we allowed to use websites that are not educationally based and risk the chance of violating some kind of school policy. If the content of educationally based and the teacher monitors the communication, I don’t see anything wrong with it. I feel we are at a disadvantage now a days. students are allowed to rebel more and more against school and teachers have less and less power. We have to use what tools we do have to reach the students and be creative as well. I think I am going to be a teacher to use the students preferred form of communication as an engagement tool. I don’t see it as me against the students but me trying to fit into their world.
I like your first paragraph, I have had my facebook on private and do not have my full name on it way before I became a teacher. I did this because I did not want people to find me in general however, now that I am a teacher this has helped because I know many of my students have tried to find me on the internet. I also do not like that the school gives out my first name of student's report cards. I believe this should be kept away from them so they cannot try to find the teacher online. I believe that there should be a balance between student communication with the teacher but be kept at a minimum outside of the school environment.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree about the importance of maintaining that delicate divide between friend and teacher. Nowadays, many of our students are growing up much faster than we did in the 1980s and 1990s in no small part due to the growing influence of new technologies. As a result, many of them have insightful, witty things to share, some of which makes me laugh given its poignancy and relevance as hard as I try to maintain a serious composure. Consequently, I attempt to adhere to the spectrum of initially presenting a strict, serious and no-nonsense approach with the students so they understand that we are their teachers and not their friends. Once that respect is established, we can slowly begin loosening up and making interactions more informal and casual. This carries over to any personal websites, blogs, emails, etc. that we utilize with them and their parents. Personally, I would never “friend” my students on Facebook or accept friend requests from them because it diminishes the professional relationship between students and teachers by revealing too much personal information in a lax, impersonal format that reduces the teacher in the eyes of students to nothing more than a glorified friend.
ReplyDelete