Teachers are asked to remove their students from friends on Facebook.

The administration of one of the schools in Florida advises teachers not to “friend” students in social networks, arguing that the connection between teacher and student in this environment is “inappropriate”.
This week, the leadership of the Lee County School issued a list of guidelines for teachers who instructed them not to interact with students through social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter in any way. The instructions, which came into force for the 2010-2011 school year, also warn teachers about possible problems and their consequences in connection with the use of this means of communication.

“Employees, regardless of the reasons, should not interact with children attending school through any public social networking site,” the document says. “Including announcements of“ friendship ”or allowing students to access personal web pages and teacher profiles in social networks.”

This is the first school in the state of Florida, and possibly in all of the United States, denoting the principles of interaction between teachers and students in the social environment.

The document was not released with the aim of punishing anyone, but as a preventive measure. “We don’t want teachers and students to do something about which they will later regret,” said the director of the information service and press of general education schools in Lee County.
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He also noted that at this step the administration was pushed a lot of stories across the country, when someone posted something on Facebook, which then turned against him. At the same time, he asked not to consider them Internet police or Big Brother, the administration’s only desire was to help teachers and students with the help of published instructions to make the right decisions.

The proposed document is not binding, but merely instruct teachers to adhere to a particular pattern of behavior.

When communicating with teachers and students via social networks, e-mail or text messages, anything can happen, which can later turn into serious problems for each of the parties. Therefore, the administration recommends that all teachers take a certain way to behave in a certain way in the network, so as not to get into trouble later.

The developers of the guidelines hope that their initiative to introduce control over the behavior of their employees and create clear principles of behavior will be picked up at other schools in the future.

As an example of a problem situation, we can cite a case that happened to one of the teachers in January of this year in the state of Pennsylvania, who was removed from work after a school employee posted her photos from a bachelorette party on Facebook. And although the images were online only one day, many students of the school viewed her photos with a stripper.
The case attracted the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit and helped the unfortunate teacher. Her reputation has been restored, and the school administration will pay her a salary for all the time she has been suspended from work.

“Educators just need to remove all of their students from friends in order to avoid similar incidents in the future. There is absolutely no reason to “be friends” with students on social networks, especially when there are other ways to communicate, using school websites or e-mail, ”the developers of the rulebook say.

Social networks continue to grow and many teachers use these sites to find out what is happening with their students or to organize various events. The Lee County school acknowledges that this is a growing trend, but asks teachers to refrain from using social networks or warn leaders when their use is necessary for educational reasons. Teachers are also recommended to work this question with school webmasters to create school websites where people can share information, discuss projects and organize events.

The administration hopes for a positive reaction to the new document, drawing attention to the fact that the new rules will remind people that “not everything that can be used in private life can be transferred to professional activities”. However, if teachers intend to continue interacting with students through social networks, they must do this very, very carefully.

based on livescience