Do you think its okay for teacher-student relationships outside of school? Should a student and a teacher have contact with each other when they are outside the classroom?!?!
One teacher thought that student-teacher relationships outside of school may be an interesting experiment.
Randy Turner, a 52-year-old english teacher at South Middle School in Joplin, Missouri set up a MySpace page and his students began asking to add him as a friend and sending him questions about assignments. When this started happening he realized he may be onto something. He realized that having a MySpace and allowing his students to talk to him through it may let them think he is open to communication and may make them feel more comfortable in his classroom.
Many teachers feel that sites like MySpace or Facebook give their students open doors to let them connect with their students about homework, tutoring and other school matters. Many others feel that it will breed inappropriate relationships with students.
There have been 11 teachers from Misouri in the last 2 years arrested and convicted of inappropriate behavior with students. Because of this, state legislature Jane Cunningham is sponsoring a bill in the Missouri House of Representatives that would ban elementary school teachers from having social-networking friendships with their students.
Do you feel like its a bad idea for students to be able to have open communication with their teachers outside of the classroom in ways like a social-networking website or e-mail?!?!
Interesting
Labels:
communication,
facebook,
myspace,
teacher relationships
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1 comments:
Krystin,
I am the teacher who was quoted in the article and I thought I would tell your readers about a couple of problems with the CNN article. The original law that was proposed in Missouri had nothing whatsoever to do with social networking sites, but followed an Associated Press study which showed the 11 cases of teachers having inappropriate relationships with students that were mentioned in the article. What the article does not mention is that none of those relationships had anything to do with social networking sites. That part of the bill was added in committee after an incident in the St. Louis area in which a woman posed as a teenage boy, started an online relationship with one of her daughter's friends, then broke it off, causing the girl to commit suicide. After that, MySpace became a convenient scapegoat for legislators. I address the topic more fully on my blog, The Turner Report, at http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2008/08/teachers-and-myspace.html
Thanks for your time!
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