In chapter 14 on page 469 there is a short article about whether your students are your friends or if they are fiends. While the question is not answered by the author it is meant for each individual person to answer on their own. In this article, it states that, "Although students are the primary source of a teacher's success, they can also be a source of failure. Three areas in particular cause problems: discipline, social distance and sex." It states throughout the article that the longer students stay in educational programs, the better they might be able to handle the children and understand them as well as connect with them on another level of comfort and attitude. Reaching the end of the article, it states that beginning teachers score significantly lower on attitude inventories than students just entering teacher education. Does that mean that once some people are teachers they kind of give up in the face of difficulty or has their desire to teach and mold young minds been ruined by one hard year most likely their first year? That is a question, I intend to answer.
The Lamar County school board in Mississippi has recently decided to limit communication between students and teachers outside the walls of the school, or more specifically restrict their communication online. These new rules do not limit any students (or teachers) from creating online profiles on sites such as Facebook or MySpace, but does limit their interaction on such sites. The board specifically “prohibits teachers from texting or communicating with students through Internet social network sites.”
Although they seem to have only mentioned Facebook and MySpace specifically, I would imagine that it would also apply to other sites such as Twitter, identi.ca or even leaving comments on personal blogs.
According to Superintendent Ben Burnett their “intent is to limit the personal communication between teachers and students” because they are afraid of the line between “professional and personal communication” getting crossed. This sounds logical, after all why would a teacher, someone who is a grown up want to be “friends” with someone who is a teenager, or possibly even younger online when in their real life they are an authority figure to that same person.
However moving into this tech and web centric world that we are now living in the lines are easily crossed, especially with the early adopter social networking crowd.
The subject of grown-ups mixing with young children, or even young adults online is one that often comes with sinister thoughts attached and often brings to mind a deviant adult. Hey, we have all seen, if not at least heard of NBC’s ‘To catch a predator’ which focuses on grown adults preying on young children. Don’t get me wrong that is creepy and wrong, but its not all like that.
http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/can-a-teacher-and-a-student-be-friends-a-mississippi-school-says-no/
Can a teacher and a student be friends? A Mississippi school says no
by Robert Nelson on Jul 29, 2008 at 11:59 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment