Hey Teach, Get off the Facebook: School Bans Teacher-Student Friendships

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REUTERS/Thierry Roge

Online connections? Not in education. Why teachers and students will never be “friends.”

School officials in Norton, Mass., having issued a ruling against online connections between teachers and current or former students. Worried about potential inappropriate Internet communications between teacher and pupil, the board made a plea to teachers to avoid social media relationships with students – or else.

As inappropriate teacher-student Facebook scandals have been made public in recent weeks (three in New York public schools alone) school boards are attempting to eliminate the possibility of a problem by issuing rules to faculty and staff forbidding social media connections with students, mainly on sites Facebook or MySpace. “We want to head it off at the pass,’’ one school board member told the Boston Globe. “Teachers know this already, but we wanted to have something official on the books.’’

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