Teachers Shouldn't Have Friends

When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time after school hanging around various bus stop shelters* with my friends 'being social'. If one of our teachers started hanging around with us we would have reacted quite strongly (or being the polite young man I was, we would probably have just gone somewhere else :-^).

Teachers 'Friending' students is the digital equivalent.

Now as a teacher, advice was given by my organisation a few years ago stating clearly that 'Friending' is inappropriate.
A few teachers from one of the departments wanted to know recently how to 'quickly' unfriend people because of the details/photos that they were starting to see about their students.

TEACHERS SHOULDN'T HAVE STUDENTS

AS FACEBOOK FRIENDS

The whole issue of why a teacher should want to use Facebook for educational purposes in the first place will be the topic for another Friday.

By coincidence, the Guardian published an article (Teachers warned over befriending pupils on Facebook) a few days later. Communication is a slippery sucker:

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said,

but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. 

Sometimes it's better not to say anything in certain surroundings!!

TGIF

*I'm glad to report that as I've got older the bus stop thing has changed (hmmm).