August 8, 2011

• Missouri Facebook Fail: Social Media and Education

  The blogosphere has been abuzz a bit about the recent Missouri law banning public school teachers from having social media contact with their students. The Yahoo news article stated

  In Missouri, a new bill effective on August 28 will formally ban teachers from befriending students on social networking websites like Facebook. The law is an aggressive step toward dictating the interactions educators are allowed in online social spaces — a relatively uncharted legislative territory.

  Missouri Senate Bill 54 is also known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, named for a Missouri student who allegedly had a sexual relationship with an abusive teacher beginning when she was 12. The case, which happened decades ago, exceeded Missouri’s statute of limitations and never came to trial.

  If you think the law might go a bit far, you aren’t alone. Forbes magazine ran a column online suggesting that the new law targets the wrong “problem.”  As a teacher who finds Facebook an invaluable tool … and as a believer in relational teaching …. I think the law rests on a number of faulty assumptions about teachers, education, and social media.

  Let me enumerate:

  Myth #1: Teachers are dangerous, sexually-charged individuals lurking in the darkness to abuse kids.
  Let’s be honest, folks. We’re all aware of the highly-publicized cases of child abuse within schools. I think it’s horrific. I hope abusers and molesters are caught, prosecuted, and buried UNDER the jail. But to write a law that assumes all teachers are potential pedophiles is like treating all post office employees as potential psychopaths.  Most kids see their mail carrier on a daily basis, often when no other adults are around. Why aren’t those relationships prohibited on Facebook? I’m personally offended that Missouri couldn’t find a better way to screen the teachers in their public schools.

  Myth #2: Students are safer online when they don’t befriend adults.
  It stuns me to hear adults argue that teachers shouldn’t befriend students on Facebook. Let me get this straight. You would rather see a bunch of 14 year old girls rip each other apart in an online gossip fest than let them be in the presence of adults who can lend a voice of wisdom (not condemnation) to the situation?  When a teen is feeling depressed and suicidal, you hope he’ll turn to one of his high school friends for sound advice?  When a kid finds out that a friend is in danger or being abused, you want them to just solve this on their own?
        Most kids know at least one teacher whom they trust and respect. When in danger, they would rather reach out to a trusted adult…. IF that adult is “around.”  Nowadays, life happens within social media: Facebook, Twitter, text messaging.   Why should Missouri (and many school districts) ban some of the best mentors from these places?

  Myth #3: Social media provides more opportunities for abusers.
  I’m sure the rate of porn consumption went up when Sir What’s His Name invented the Internet 20 years ago, but that certainly didn’t change human nature. Sick, twisted people adapt to prey on the weak in *any* venue. The Internet simply takes the conversation into a new kind of back alley; I don’t believe that it creates *more* back alleys to work in. 
        Any teacher who wants to sleep with an underage kid needs help and criminal prosecution. It’s not like the district can reliably police all of their employees’ Facebook friend lists….which means banning teachers from Facebook leaves no one behind except the predatory people. *shudders*

  Myth #4: Education happens best when students and teachers maintain their distance.
  I’m not sure who sold this stupid idea to the general public, but it counteracts everything I believe about humanity, community, and education. No man is an island. Education IS discipleship, and it’s more than the mere transfer of information between a “teacher” and a receiver. (If education were merely about transferring knowledge, school districts would save millions of dollars by replacing educators with computer programs.)
        Teaching is relational. Discipline is relational. No one accepts as fact anything coming from the mouth of someone they don’t trust.  The myth of the disconnected teacher and the distant non-relational classroom arose in the hyper-rational 20th century along with other stupid ideas like behavioral conditioning in education and treating kids like little computers who merely sit and process information. 
        Let’s put this conversation back where it belongs:  Teachers directly affect the moral, social, and intellectual (yes, even spiritual) upbringing of a student. If you can’t trust the teachers in your school to “do right” by your kids, why on earth are you sending your kids there?!

  Myth #5: The social Web exists merely for entertainment, and offers little educational value.
  This is the most dangerous myth, if not the most offensive. Teachers around the nation are proving again and again how powerful tools like FB and Twitter can be for engaging students, teaching online discernment, connecting kids around the world, promoting curiosity and creativity, and delivering content never available before the Internet became commonplace.
        Again, I’m stunned that intelligent adults think the best way to protect kids from harm is to refuse to teach them anything about social media and to pretend it doesn’t exist and that it isn’t important. (Wait… that sounds a lot like the way we treat sex ed…. but that’s another post…..) You can ban cell phones in school, but how does that help kids learn to build healthy boundaries within texting relationships?  You can ban Facebook and Twitter between 8am and 3pm because kids “waste time,” but that doesn’t help a dull teacher engage her classroom.
        You want kids to be interested and engaged in classroom content?  Hire excellent teachers and give them the tools to teach passionately.   What you ban (or don’t ban) will never substitute for a well-trained, qualified, creative educator.
  

  I’d like to propose a different set of An Educator’s Social Media Guidelines.

  1. Don’t ever say anything to a student (whether online or in person) that you wouldn’t also say to the student if his/her parents or your principal were standing right next to you.
  Duh…..Do I even need to explain this one? If you couldn’t say it without negative consequences, don’t say it at all… doesn’t matter WHO you’re talking to.  Treat all communication online as a public event.  After all, once you’ve written it down, it never goes away.

  2. Recognize that teaching is relational by nature, not by choice.
  I love the blog posts coming from a public school teacher in Phoenix, AZ about teaching relationally. In case you think I’m just a crazy religious zealot, he’s saying the same thing about teaching and discipline and classroom culture from a secular perspective. You can’t really teach without acknowledging that you are now in a relationship with the students in your classroom. You have the power to harm or to build up. There is no neutral ground.

  3. Live transparently and honestly.*
  Everything you do as a teacher affects your students, whether on Saturday night or in your classroom. If you think you can live a double-life and hide your “real person” from your students, you’ll fail. [Especially if your students are over the age of 12. Adolescents can small hypocrisy from a mile away.] 
        As a personal principle, I don’t engage in activities that I would want to hide from my students, parents, boss, or friends. (Or God, most importantly.) 
  
  4. Understand that our lives are full of overlapping circles of relationships (thanks, Google+). Recognize the differences between a student-teacher relationship and a friend-friend relationship.
  It takes a few years for any individual teacher to figure out how to care for her students without turning students into surrogate friends. Having more teacher-mentors around for new teachers helps the process along. But teaching is by nature an intensely emotional and relational experience. If you don’t love those kids, you won’t teach them; you’ll just throw information at them and then complain about how badly they act out in class. 
        Social media is here to stay.  I don’t have to interact with my student friends on Facebook the same way I interact with my friends from college. But the government doesn’t need to ban teachers from Facebook just to make that point.  Gotta love government…. inefficient and clumsy by definition. And it’s worth noting here that teachers and students ought to be free to friend or not to friend others rather than backed into a corner either way.

  5. Use social media as a classroom tool to model proper online behavior for students.
  Kids learn by doing and by seeing others do. It’s time we adults took ownership of the online-education of kids.
        Why do I use Facebook Groups as classroom websites?
        Because kids are there. Because I can disseminate information rapidly to 99% of my students within an hour, taking 1 minute of my time. Because Facebook connects me to tons of people in my own personal network who can help me craft a better lesson plan. Because sometimes kids have questions at night and I’d rather they FB message me than call me and interrupt whatever’s going on at my house (unless it’s a true emergency). Because I can post something to FB and people find it on their own time. Because I can gently rebuke, exhort, and encourage when I see online behavior among my students that isn’t kosher (and because I have a good relationship with my students thanks to our small class sizes, I have the trust-capital in the bank [so to speak] to address those issues when I see them).

  I hope the Missouri law gets struck down, soon.

  And I really hope the conversation about education in this country shifts to a more honest, realistic assessment of teachers as mentors, not robots.

  ---

  *Please understand, this principle of transparent living sometimes puts me in conflict with good people who disagree with me on moral, biblical, or preferential grounds.
        For example, I happen to like progressive metal music, a la Between the Buried and Me.  I like it a lot. I’ve had adults tell me that my music preferences would be better off kept hidden, so they wouldn’t have to answer questions about it from their kids. Or maybe they think the music comes from the underbelly of Satan.  I dunno. But I do know that biblically, I’m on solid ground with the way I view music as a good gift in God’s creation. I’m happy to engage in thoughtful conversations with people on matters of Scripture or conscience.  But I’m not going to live a hypocritical life and pretend my iPod is full of nothing but U2 and Iron & Wine. Why? Because kids see my iPod from time to time, or they ask me what music I like, or they come play me some everyone-hanging-off-the-wall-playing-a-guitar-riff-breakdown-this-gives-me-a-headache example of “good music” in their opinion and ask me if I like it. I’m not gonna lie to them. Lying is always a bad idea.
       Another good example is alcohol. I don’t drink a whole lot, to be honest. Alcohol is high in calories. But I like a glass of wine with my meal, and I’ll drink a beer with friends when they want to go. Sometimes at the end of a hard day, a Guinness hits the spot.  The drinking age in America is 21.  I don’t understand people who pretend to kids that, as adults, they don’t drink.  Why? Do you think there’s something wrong with it? Scripturally, there isn’t. The Bible command is “don’t get drunk.”  Fencing the law (“You can’t get drunk if you never drink!”) is Pharisaism of the type that Christ condemned repeatedly in the Gospels. Are you of legal age?  Then whether you drink is a personal issue between your conscience and God.  If I sneak around and hide my actions from Facebook or anything else, I’m teaching kids that alcohol is somehow yummy and illicit, worthy of deceit and secretism. That’s stupid, and it’s the very attitude that leads teens to get themselves drunk trying to figure out why alcohol is so exciting. The truth? It isn’t. Unless adults have led you to believe that you’re somehow really missing out on the best-kept secret in America. Hmmmm.  Hypocrisy is always a bad idea with nasty unintended consequences. 
        I know people will disagree with me here. Feel free to comment. 
        But I don’t teach 7-year-olds. I work at a high school. My students have friends (or themselves) who sleep around, do drugs, drink at parties, experiment, drive too fast, feel suicidal, take pills for depression or other mental illnesses, cut themselves, experience abuse, or have nasty relationship problems. Those situations are true whether we adults feel comfortable acknowledging them or not.    I figure it’s time for adults to stop pretending.

  • 3:45 pm
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