Have you ever stopped at the title question? What are your thoughts on this? In this article I explain the subject from my point of view. Let’s see if your thoughts match mine. Read on to find out.
As it seems to me, teachers should not always be available to their students to help them with their academic or other problems. Students must learn to help themselves most of the time.
Teachers can have fixed time slots for social media with their students, for example, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. They can simply announce in class and those students who are interested can go online at those time slots. Teachers are not required to post these times on their websites in addition to their physical advisory hours.
They must maintain their seriousness and severity while remaining friendly to their students. They must maintain their respect and air of importance so that the students keep their distance without being too intimate.
Students should be given the impression that teachers are not their friends, colleagues, or professional counterparts. Therefore, your teachers have the freedom to choose whether or not they want to be part of their social networks or professional networks. Even if they do, teachers must carry their authentic images or identities at all times in order for their students to fear them to some degree.
On the other hand, this is the age of the modern age and social media is a modern age facility. So if shy and modest students feel freer to interact online rather than directly confront them, teachers should welcome them and be a part of their social networks.
But still, I stand by my earlier assertions that teachers should, under no circumstances, lose their seriousness and respect, while they indulge in networking with their students to help them academically or otherwise.
In conclusion, those are my thoughts on whether teachers should have social media boundaries with their students. Having been in the teaching profession myself, I find teachers worthy and important, that students should come to respect and show manners and courtesies accordingly, even while in the process of social networking.
Now that I have presented my views on the subject, what is your opinion on it? Do they resonate with mine? How would you put it? Chances are your thoughts on the subject are close enough to mine.