Teachers and facebook

JBANKS26 · June 2014

Would love teacher and non-teacher opinions on this.

I recently finished the school year at an elementary school that I am not returning to next year. I was able to get a job much closer to home at a school in my neighborhood. My former school is a 30 minute commute away. While at this school, I built close relationships with my students and their families. Now, a number of the parents have friended me on facebook. I haven't accepted or declined the requests yet, and I'm not sure what the *right* thing to do is. While I no longer work at this school I don't think it's a conflict of interest, but at the same point, I'm not totally sure I want these parents looking at my old college photos on facebook either!

These parents are all laid back and I had really positive, friendly relationships with them. I wouldn't mind being their facebook friend for the sake of seeing updates on how their family/kiddos are doing, but I'm just still not sure. Any thoughts?

TIA!

jtmh2012 · June 2014

Create a "list". Stick all these people in that list. Then set a custom permission on your photos that says something like "Friends, but not school_friends" or something like that.

consciousdear88 · June 2014

Coming from a non-teacher with a teacher friend--the privacy setting buttons will become your friend.

My childhood best friend teaches at a local public high school. She did not have an issue with parents adding her on there as much as she did students who thought she was cool and wanted to add her. She wound up logging on and changing the privacy settings for most of her posts and pictures initially to be hidden to those that weren't on a certain created list.

What she did wind up having to do in the end was using a fake name for her facebook. I would probably not go this route if you actually use your account for social networking, etc. But it seems to have deterred a lot of requests from them since they can't find her as easily.

Teachers and facebook

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