[...] District to Ban Student-Teacher Facebook Friends [...]

[...] Is it OK for students and teachers to mingle on Facebook? Maybe not, says StrollerDerby. [...]

I pretty much agree. The one exception is if the teacher has a facebook account solely for student teacher interaction — that is, the teacher posts nothing personal.

I have a similar situation in that I’ve stopped looking up people to befriend since what much of what I post is probably of no interest or downright offensive to most people. I’ve written about it in more detail here: http://www.sinasohn.net/notebooks/201003222300.html Basically, if you want to be my friend, I’ll accept that (hopefully, you know what you’re getting into) but I’m not going to search you out.

When it comes to teachers, I do think there needs to be a separation of personal from professional. For most teachers, you probably don’t want to cross that line. (If you do, chances are you’ll get a movie made about you — either starring Edward James Olmos or Sidney Poitier or starring Nicole Kidman or Cate Blanchett, depending on whether you help your student(s) or sleep with them.)

I have a standing rule that I won’t ‘friend’ a student or respond to a message from a student on Facebook. However, I have a few ‘friends’ who are former students. These are kids for whatever reason became a part of my life (babysitters, friends w/ parents, mentees, whatever) and these are kids have all moved beyond my school.

When I taught I only friended students after gradation and I still keep them on a separate filter, but I don’t think it’s necessarily absurd for teachers to be facebook friends with students, so long as they are thoughtful about their privacy settings (a good place for employers to provide guidance). Sure teachers can give students their email addresses, but kids don’t really use email; if you want to engage with them in the space where they are, you need to use facebook. danah boyd (the expert on teens and social networking) has written some persuasive stuff about engaging on the digital street (see http://zephoria.org). I do think you’re opening a Pandora’s box there — you’ll learn stuff you didn’t want to know, and may find yourself more intensely engaged than you wanted to be — but you can also learn things and build relationships that are genuinely useful for the job (e.g. about cyberbullying).

So no, while Facebook friending my students was not within my personal comfort zone, I don’t think a categorical no makes sense, and I do think it overlooks a lot of the realities of how teenagers use digital vs. physical space.