As a pre-service teacher, I have been going back and forth between my decisions to delete my Facebook account.   With pictures and comments, there is a growing fear that images and texts will be a teacher’s demise.   Though Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites have privacy safeguards, there are no promises that profane comments and the inappropriate pictures get in administrative hands.  I refer to one teacher’s comment in “Teachers and Facebook: ‘Don’t Do It;’” she writes: “I am going to play Crazy Bitch Bingo.”  A young teacher was forced to resign because this remark, along with pictures of her enjoying alcohol while on vacation in Europe.  Is this fair?

I believe that teachers should be allowed to have spaces in online social networking sites; however, I believe that they should be heavily guarded.  As teachers, we have an image to uphold: education.  We need to be mindful of ourselves in public spaces.  We are like “rock stars;” our friends and family are the paparazzi.  Like this teacher, I too see the pros and cons of keeping my page up.  She writes: “I have been debating all weekend about whether or not to take down my FaceBook page. My mother insists that I should do teacher and facebookso, just in case, but I don’t feel there is anything inappropriate included on my page. I try to be careful of how I am photographed in any situation because many of my friends have pages where they post photos. So even if I remove my page, there are still photos of me on the internet. I use FaceBook to keep in touch with relatives and friends who live all over the country, and it bothers me that, as a teacher, I can’t enjoy the same format of communication enjoyed by so many others.”  My Facebook friends are those who I haven’t seen in years; it’s a cyber reunion of sorts.  In “On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant,” a student and teacher reunite after 20+ years.  Darci Thompson was able to tell her former teacher: “[You] had such a huge impact on my life as a young adult.”  Were this teacher not searchable on Facebook, she would have never heard the words all teacher’s long to hear from former students.  Should teachers be denied access to Web 2.0?

Teacher-Student relationships are frown upon in the schools, so understandably it would be a no-no in the cyber world.  Should be allowed to “friend” our students on social networking sites?  In this desensitizing age, my answer is no.  Despite my concerns for bridging the media gaps between students and teachers, society sees this as improper behavior.  Mallory Simmons of CNN reports:  ”Teachers [...] believe sites like MySpace help them connect with their students about homework, tutoring and other school matters.  But others fear the social-networking sites are breeding inappropriate relationships between teachers and students.”  Despite what some teachers believe, social networking sites are not the only lines of communications between teachers and students…even in a digital world.  Simmons continues: “In Missouri in particular, a rash of student-teacher sexual relationships have spawned crackdowns on social-networking friendships. Web site badbadteacher.com, which keeps track of teachers disciplined, arrested and convicted of inappropriate behavior with students, lists 11 such teachers from Missouri within the last two years.”

Teachers should make themselves approachable without using a social networking site as a tool.  If a student friends you a social networking site, acknowledge them the next day.  Thank them for friending you and simply state the school’s policy. It’s unfortunate, yes, that we cannot connect to students in a positive way; but as they say, ‘one bad apple can ruin the barrell.’

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