Why I Friend my Students on Social Media

Not everybody wants their students at home, on their vacation, or pretty much everywhere we go. But that is almost what it turns into being once you add your students to Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social media venue we use. We don't want to filter anything we "say" to be student/school acceptable. There are concerns that our political standings or religious beliefs  might become awkward sometime in the unknown future. It just seems safer and better for everyone to keep our students segmented out form our personal life. We just need to have time to relax and worry about our job, its better for our health. From a school's point of view, we wouldn't want to put our teachers in a compromising situation that through some miscommunication, a well intentioned message turns into a legal/media nightmare. As a parent, I recall the many times that teachers lured students into inappropriate and damaging situations. It just makes sense to segment our students out of our personal life. If students need to contact us outside of school, they should use the school's email or other venue setup specifically designed for that purpose. 

With all these concerns, I decided to add my students as friends on Facebook when the fb craze hit us nine years ago. My policy went as follows

• I never "requested friendships" from any student, I only added them as they requested me to add them.
• I make a serious effort to stay out of my students personal lives. I don't follow the majority of their feeds.
• I never post anything that I wouldn't want my most immature student to know about me.
• I don't use fb as a diary, its more of a online super convenient "phone book" to keep track of people that I don't want to lose track of.
• I untag myself from any photo or post that would be awkward for my students to see.

It takes effort but I believe the benefits are worth it. I just don't have the solution on how to handle the potential for disaster if all teachers added their students. On the other hand, with the exposure our students are getting to all kinds of people online, maybe the key is educating our students about internet safety. At least they know who their teachers are.