The issue is as old as the teaching profession and as new as today: how do educators maintain appropriate boundaries with their students in the age of the Internet 2.0? On one hand, there are those who argue that, since this is where students congregate, use of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and even Twitter provide a remarkable opportunity to engage students and help them. On the other hand, there are risks to teachers who socialize online with students — risks that can lead to embarassment, censure, perhaps termination. And, of course, there have been disturbing episodes of adult teachers “grooming” students for inappropriate relationships. That’s unprofessional at the college and university level — illegal in the K-12 setting.
In past postings, this blog has featured comments by Nancy Willard, Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use and author of “Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats,” and Justin Patchin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Wiscon-Eau Claire and co-author of “Bullying Beyond the Classroom.” On April 22, I had the privilege of discussing this issue in a national webinar presented by the Health Resources and Services Administration. The webinar included Dr. Sue Limber of Clemson University, Dr. Patti Agatston of the the Prevention/Intervention Center in Cobb County Georgia, and Capt. Stephanie Bryn of HRSA. Drs. Limber and Agatston, along with Dr. Robin Kowalski of Clemson University, co-authored Cyberbullying, Bullying In the Digital Age.
Last week, an interesting email discussion including Nancy Willard and Patti Agatston was inspired by a blog entry from Dr. Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research New England. They were kind enough to share it with me, and I’m reproducing it here for the reads of this blog. While I tend to agree with Nancy Willard that the risks to teachers outweigh the rewards for teachers and students, both sides have compelling arguments. And there are policy ramifications, since some schools and school districts either have adopted policies prohibiting Internet socializing between teachers and students or are considering it. Whether such policies are advisable — or even enforceable – a basic caveat remains: BE CAREFUL OUT THERE.
Please read Dr. Boyd’s blog entry and then the comments set forth below:
From Nancy Willard:
Hi Danah,
I have some thoughts on your recent comment:
This is messy. Many teens have ZERO interest in interacting with teachers on social network sites, but there are also quite a few who are interested in interacting with SOME teachers there. Still, this is primarily a social space and their interactions with teachers are primarily to get more general advice and help. In some ways, its biggest asset in the classroom is the way in which its not a classroom tool and not loaded this way. Given that teens don’t Friend all of their classmates, there are major issues in terms of using this for groupwork because of boundary issues.
I strongly recommend schools to enact policies prohibiting online “socializing” between teachers and students. There are a heck of a lot of risks in this.
Online socializing is clearly a vehicle for flirting. There are teachers who are interested in sexual relations with young people. But there are also young adult teachers who have not really dealt with the student flirting situation – and students tend to flirt more with young adult teachers. In the online environment, disaster can strike. In 2 recent incidents in my community young teachers were convicted of sexual relations with students – and lots of the communications were via MySpace.
Even if a teacher has no inclination for this kind of a relationship, if a student starts to flirt, the teacher is in a bad position. If he or she turns the student down, this student could be emotionally distraught, could exact revenge, etc. If he or she respond warmly this might encourage the student further – and if – when – an adult sees the communications, the teacher could be accused of sexual solicitation.
A common behavior pattern is to send friendship requests to friends of friends. So basically the teacher would become the “guarantor” of all of his or her friends. There was a school resource officer who set up a profile to “meet students where they are” who got into lots of trouble – almost arrested – because the other pages he linked to – of his friends – had some material that was clearly not appropriate for students.
If a teacher links to some students and not others, there will always be the perception of grading favoritism. So the pressure on students to friend a teacher to ensure good grades would be really inappropriate.
So I see the risk as public censure, loss of job, loss of license, and criminal prosecution. And younger teachers who have less tenure and protection and are more inclined to socialize online are at greater risk.
So while I dismiss online “socializing” I strongly call for the implementation of educational interactive environments. Elsewhere in your comment you distinguish between email as a “work” tool. Yeah!!! there really needs to be a recognition of the difference between online socializing and online work – work including educational communications.
From Danah Boyd
I think that this makes sense in certain environments, but frankly, many teens that I’ve talked with have benefited tremendously from someone who cares about them in their lives who will communicate with them on their terms. I’ve seen countless cases of teachers engaging with students in very appropriate and tremendously helpful ways on MySpace. We desperately need to create a culture where teens have different adult role models to turn to. And we desperately need online spaces where there are “eyes on the street” in ways that include caring and helpful teachers. There are indeed problem cases, but in some ways, the visibility of them means that we can do something about them before it gets too out of hand. But I completely disagree with your advice because I think that the majority of youth benefit from trusted and supported adults in their daily lives, online or off.
From Patti Agatston:
I am struggling with this a little. I believe that school districts should “discourage” teachers from friending students, but I am not sure if there should be a total ban.. I have had students whose parents are close family friends friend me because they see me like an aunt or uncle. I have had other students send me a message, but not ask to friend me because they think it would be “weird” and I totally agreed. (Students can still message a faculty member even if they are not “friends.”)
I believe that faculty members do need to have boundaries with their students. They can be a respected teacher who someone goes to for advice, without friending all of the students in their class. The teacher in our district who was arrested for “sexting” a student also had friended many of his students on Facebook. He was the journalism teacher. He worked on the yearbook with them. The boundaries obviously became blurred for him, and since this was the second incident at that school of a teacher engaging in inappropriate contact with students they high school had a special training on child sexual abuse.
On the other hand, having some adult eyes involved has led to kids who were in trouble getting some assistance. Parents of students whose kids were posting underage drinking pictures were notified. They were not disciplined by the school, but the parents were made aware that their son/daughter was engaging in high risk behavior.
So – I am not sure if I would make a black and white ban on this (although many administrators would probably prefer that to make life simpler) but I am wondering if there could be some sort of district statement that says, It is discouraged for the following reasons: (all of the things you mentioned)
but that the district recognizes that there could be an individual case where someone feels it is helpful to be in the friend role.
Okay – just had another thought. Since a student could message me whether we were friends or not, a pedophile could avoid friending the student but use Facebook as a way to privately keep in touch. So perhaps in this situation it would be better for everything to be out in the open – so that we could see that boundaries were becoming blurred and inappropriate.
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Your comments on this interesting and challenging topic are encouraged and welcome.
-Mike