New Missouri law prohibits students and teachers from being friends on facebook and exchanging messages. Thoughts?

Before I read the article, here’s my knee-jerk reaction, so they could have more time studying and teaching?

Sorry, the details are muddy. Apparently they can be friends, but can’t send private messages.

Hmm, here’s a better article.

I’m slightly against this being a law. I graduated High School in 2009, but I was (and still am) Facebook friends with many of my teachers. I don’t think that it is risky or unhealthy and as long as the children are acting appropriately it is nothing that I think could be harmful.

Read the article and it seems they are discouraging sexual relations to develop. Guess they believe the cons outweigh the pros in this case. I tend to agree since if I was a teenager I’d probably befriend all teachers I like but I’d probably poke an attractive one more. Get that @Blackberry, poke? lol.

Maybe it’s for the best, can’t have those randy bastards….students compromising that teacher/pupil special relationship, now can we?

I think it is a good idea. I don’t like the idea of a teacher initiating a social connection of that manner, and I don’t like the idea of a teacher accepting a friendship from a student. It’s not acceptable at a university or college level, why would it ever be okay at high school or middle school?

Perhaps I am jaded as a popular shop teacher at my daughter’s middle school was arrested for having an improper relationship with a 14 year old girl he was tutoring. Part of the evidence is he was sending up to 140 suggestive texts per day.

A teacher who agrees to a social connection on Facebook becomes responsible in loco parentis if anything inappropriate is revealed. Not smart for a teacher to accept that burden outside teh school and school hours.

Oy. You know what’s the problem in Amy Hestir case? The molestation and assault. Not that they exchanged a few private PMs, not that their relationship was more than strictly teacher/student, but that he freaking sexually assaulted her. Do we not have laws against that already? And since the teacher violated those pesky sexual assault laws, is there any reason to think that this would have prevented what happened to Hestir?

This is a very poorly written law. If you don’t mean for it to prevent teachers from being able to even create accounts on Facebook, then why not specifically put that in there so that no overzealous prosecutor can charge them with doing just that? This unfairly punishes teachers (who already get enough crap) for not actually doing anything wrong, but for doing something that occasionally leads to something that is wrong. But it’s like preventing people from walking into a liquor store just because a few people walk into liquor stores and hold them up; the problem isn’t the initial walk-in, it’s the part where they pull out a gun and demand all the money.

@zenvelo At least at my university, it is totally acceptable for teachers to be friends or Facebook friends or get drinks with students, providing they aren’t currently in a student/teacher relationship. Example: I’m friends with one of my teachers, and we grab drinks at least once a month, but that was only after I’d taken all her classes.

@Aethelflaed Great liquor store-not everybody is a holdupper analogy but can’t help to think the law is more like keeping all potential holduppers from going into any liquor store. The few that may or will rob will still do it, but they have to do it somewhere else.

I think it is probably good. Probably protects the teacher more than anything. Still, friends of friends amd everyone can frequently see facebook info depending on settingsl so it is not like they might not still see facebook exchanges, even if they are not friends.

@mazingerz88 Well, the law would be targeting those who would hold up a liquor store, but since they don’t know who that is, it would just prevent everyone from doing it.

I think this is stupid. I only skimmed the article, but I’m wondering if the law only applies to a teacher’s current students or if all their former students are off limits? Also I wonder if it only applies to underage students? I’m sure the article says if I just read it all the way through, I’ll get to that soon.

Anyway, the reason I think it’s stupid is that I have several of my old high school teachers on my Facebook friends list. I got very close (not in a weird way) with several of my teachers during high school. They saw my great enthusiasm for their classes and want to hear about how my studies are going in college. Also, many of them taught for me when I was sick and are interested in hearing how that is going these days too. I think the teacher-student relationship can be a strong and important one and I hate to think they couldn’t send me a private message to inquire about my wellbeing or how my studies are going without being suspected of molestation.

@Mariah See, those types of relationships seem to be why many teachers go in to teaching – so that they can meet those few kids who have a passion for that topic and for learning, and watch them grow and help them grow even after said kid has left their classroom. It’s a shame that the bill would prevent that, and potentially give aspiring teachers even more reasons to choose another profession.

I’ve been to Missouri and find it to be a very repressed state. I guess that they are against teacher/student interactions because they’re afraid that some of the more liberal ideas of an educated class will rub off on their children. Remember Cape Girardeau Mo. is the home of Rush Limbaugh and they are proud of him!

@Aethelflaed I think that’s the whole point. No one would really die not having access to a liquor store. Also, it’s out of this world to think that aspiring teachers would quit being one because they can’t Facebook with students?

@mazingerz88 No, but no one will die not having access to Facebook either, so this seems like a moot point. And the law doesn’t just restrict teachers PMing students through Facebook, but rather teachers privately messaging them through any online website – including possibly email, possibly being friends with them on Facebook, and even possibly having a Facebook/Twitter/social networking account even if they never actually contact students through it, depending upon how prosecutors and judges end up interpreting the law. I don’t think it’s too far a stretch to think that people out there would think that if the state is going to criminalize them having any relationship beyond the classroom, then that’s defeating enough of the reason for them to become teachers that they should just choose another profession. Maybe if we already treated teachers well, it would be less of an issue, but this is easily taking away one of the few rewards teachers get.

@mazingerz88 I’d go as far as supporting this law between teachers and students up to the age of 16. Maybe.

@mazingerz88 I remember my best teachers as being accessible. What possible reason could there be to forbid teachers from answering and asking questions through email. One thing I noticed that Missouri has a preponderance of ultra religious types. I think they assume that if an adult is talking to a child, the adult is soliciting sex. It is a bit twisted but if the religious are against anything, it is sex. They tend to see it everywhere and it is pretty twisted.

@mazingerz88 I don’t. I want 13 year olds to be able to ask teachers via FB pms for additional instruction on how to do a pre-algebra problem. I want 15 year olds emailing their teachers asking for help understanding how something in Things Fall Apart was symbolism. I want them all to be able to pm their teachers and say “my dad just hit me, what do I do?”. Yes, there are other ways of communication, but they won’t use them. By not letting them use the communication that they are so much more comfortable with, you effectively stamp out much communication. If we are always demonizing social media, we will never see all the good it can do.

@Ron_C Shouldn’t there be a way for technology to detect improper sex messages between teachers and underage students without invading privacy? Tsk, maybe not.

I’m all for teachers and students to have this ideal relationship based on learning and self-improvement. I had teachers I felt I could be friends with since i enjoyed the way they taught and inspired me but I also had one who touched me wrong. I only realized that was what happened long after the fact in my early teen years.

@mazingerz88 “Shouldn’t there be a way for technology to detect improper sex messages between teachers and underage students without invading privacy?” That would work if the school set up its own mail server. Improper messages could be flagged and the transgressors punished. There is more of a danger, these days, for the student to sext the teacher. I understand that it has been common for the students to send naked pictures of themselves. What a shame. We have this great technology and people have to screw it up.

Retarded.

@Ron_C the only teacher tthat “touched me wrong” was the gym teacher that paddled me for forgetting my jock strap one too many times.

@Ron_C He must have transferred from the school I went to.

I still think Facebook between a teacher and a current student is not right. We have structures in place at both our middle school and our high school for kids to ask questions on line and get responses from teachers. That’s a far cry from a kid posting something that a teacher sees and gets put in a bad position.

Suppose “Bobby” posts a picture of “Dusty” groping “Susie” at a party and beer is in evidence? Any teacher friend of Bobby now has to act on knowledge of Dusty and Susie or run the risk of being held accountable by the parents.

Online communication between the school and the home should be done with the parents involved, not student to teacher or teacher to student.

Thank you for posting both articles. This seems like a knee-jerk reaction to one of a handful of sad situations where a teacher/student relationship over-stepped the boundaries. It should not be made a law, but an ethical standard set by each school on how they want to handle their internal policies.

According to the second article, part of the proposed law states: No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a nonwork-related internet site which allows exclusive access with a current or former student. Fine. So they can still use text and calls to carry out their illicit intents. In the few cases where a teacher has gotten involved with a student and it has gone to court, the result is essentially the same; any documentation found, be it on the internet or through phone records, will be evidence for the prosecution. If the law gets passed, who is going to monitor all of the social sites? The site owners? I think not.

Should a teacher be banned from communicating privately with a former student? Seriously? Both of my sisters are/were public teachers, and they would not agree with this part at all, and nor do I. Two of my former high school teachers are friends on Facebook, and we have exchanged private messages. I am 48. Would this be unacceptable under Missouri law?

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard don’t use the “R” word!!! XD

It is a pretty silly law. But, then again, it’s kind of creepy. My math teacher is on Facebook, and so is my Latin teacher, so it would be a little inapropriate for teachers to be connected with thier students on the internet because you don’t know how much of a creep they can be! Like, they could be a petophile, like my English teacher. (Do you guys remember that question I asked? I can’t find it.) It’s a crazy law, but it makes sense.

Yeah, yeah.

This is all well and good but lets face it, it doesn’t go far enough.

When do we get a law prohibiting my parents from friending me?

^^Now that I can get behind.

My grandparents have friended me. It seems like every day I get a phonecall from them: “You need to be careful about what you put on the facepage! I saw where you were using foul language, yada yada.”

But what about the children?!

I don’t friend my current students on FB—mostly because I don’t want to know what they’re doing during off hours and I like being able to post status messages for my family and friends without having to go through the “teacher-filter.”
That being said, I have a “student access only” personal email that they can use to ask homework questions and print out any strange email. I’ve had emails from bawling girls in the middle of the night screaming help, help, because something dramatic happened in their lives and I help if I’m available, but extremely carefully. I read all my emails with my administrator’s eyes, not my own.

To be honest I’m just tired of laws being made about everything. In order to prevent anything ‘unsavory’ from happening, they ban just about anything they can get their nasty little hands on! Are they going to start bugging classrooms so if you get slightly off the topic of math you get kicked out of class for being too friendly with your teacher? Replace all of the teachers with androids? Put the students’ desk area behind a wall of bulletproof glass?

I can understand people not thinking it’s a good idea to befriend your teachers on facebook – most of the teachers I’ve encountered don’t even use their school names because they don’t want students friending them – but to make a law about it? A bit over the top in my opinion.

^agreed. I generally think that we need fewer laws, not more.