Should teachers and students be Facebook friends?

Central Indiana students are getting ready for school by stocking up on usual supplies for reading, writing and arithmetic, but they are also thinking about writing off some Facebook friendships.

“I don’t really think someone should be able to tell you if you can be friends with someone or not,” said Thomas Gomez, who will be a junior at Zionsville High School.

Gomez and his family started talking about where to draw the line online after learning Missouri lawmakers passed a law banning exclusive Facebook relationships between teachers and students.

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Guidance counselor Harry Mamlin said social media leaves a lot of grey area, so he uses a hard and fast rule.

“My personal policy is I’m not friends with anyone under the age of 18,” said Mamlin.

The Indiana State Teachers Association sends out a “Best Practices” guide for teachers using Facebook. Some of the tips from the ISTA include not venting about students, not posting anything you would not say in person and finding out if your district has a policy in place.

Most districts in Central Indiana do not have specific Facebook friendship policies. However, most do have policies about maintaining appropriate teacher/student conduct, no matter the format or the medium.

Lisa Shea has a daughter at Zionsville High School and said she thinks it is fine for teenagers to become friends with their teachers after they graduate or are no longer their students.

“It seems like recently a lot of the teachers who were friends with their students said ‘if you’re a current student, let’s wait until after you’ve graduated, then we can be friends again.’ I thought that was a good thing,” said Shea.

Gabby Gomez graduated from Zionsville in 2009 and said she knew teachers who would accept her friendship, and others who chose to opt out.

“I respected it of course if they didn’t want to be friends,” said Gomez. She added now that she is a student at Indiana University, and she rarely becomes friends with her teachers through Facebook.

Mamlin said he knows some teachers who use Facebook as a positive way to be accessible to their students.

“I think school districts might have their own policies and that might be a better approach to it because different communities may have different expectations,” said Mamlin. “Teachers might want to use Facebook to be table to talk about assignments or answer questions in a way that kids feel comfortable, so I can see how they would want to use it.”

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