Mentor - Student Interactions Online

[MechEng83]

I'd like to post a question to the general CD community.

Recently, one of our parent/mentors sent me an online article from the New York Times talking about school district policies on social media.

Here's an excerpt from that email:

FYI. We need a policy for the robotics team. I'm not seeing anything inappropriate on Facebook. Awareness will ensure nothing develops.

School districts across the country are imposing strict new guidelines that ban private conversations between teachers and their students on cellphones and online platforms. http://nyti.ms/tAHS39

What are your thoughts about this? I have very strong opinions on the matter, but I wanted to see what you all had to say about it.

Thanks!

[Tom Line]

Facebook, cellphones, or any other form of social media are not allowed at robotics competitions or practices.

Other than than, it's up to the parents to govern it. What the kids do on their free time outside robotics doesn't fall under the purview of robotics, unless it directly is about robotics (i.e., they call a mentor a name, etc.)

Disallowing private conversation seems pretty silly. You'd be creating an un-enforceable rule just to try to remove some liability from the team. Private conversations are also necessary sometimes. Why try to extend robotics beyond what it's meant to be?

[Cuog]

I will never get bans like this. First its already banned to have those sorts of relationships with students, so I'm not sure what yet another ban is going to actually accomplish. Secondly it seems to assume that every teacher is a convenient means of communication away from "intimate relationships" with their students.

It's certainly a problem to take seriously, and I can only imagine how scary the whole idea must be for parents, that someone you trust to help your kids grow and learn is taking such horrible advantage of them. I just can't see how the current means of prevention do anything more than make the people in charge feel better that they're at least doing something.

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Cuog

make the people in charge feel better that they're at least doing something.

“The medicine can be worse than the disease”

Risk management by a school system is a legitimate issue but the implementation of risk management carries its own risks.
Recently a book was written called NurtureShock. It was written by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. The central premise of this book is that many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are
in fact backfiring – because key twists in the science have been overlooked.

from the book "Nurtureshock" -

"Teens need opportunities to take good risks. They need more exposure to other adults, and even kids of other ages—and less exposure to teens exactly their age. They need part of their life to feel real, not just a dress rehearsal for college. They will mature more quickly if these elements are in their life."

One of the big revelations to me personally is how students have gone backward in their development relative to a generation ago. They do not know how to deal with adults, they are losing their creativity, they are not as capable of independent thought and problem solving.

These ‘risk managers’ are creating new societal risks in advancing the pool of low performing students.

Teens ( and younger and older ) people need to understand inappropriate behavior. There are ways to deal with inappropriate behavior.

There are a lot of things that affect student’s academic performance. Should we separate the sexes so there is no risk of daydreaming about the hot guy or pretty girl across the room ?

How about eliminating sports so that there can be no injury. If robotics teams had injuries at the rate sports injuries occurred there would not be a robotics team in the country.

What if a teen in crisis needs to talk to a trusted teacher, mentor, or other adult ? Slam the door and say “get lost”. Refer them to a non-responsive faceless non-trusted government agency that is no good at dealing with a crisis, ( yet another government answer to everything - sheesh - don’t even get me started )

The primary purpose of the policy is to protect the school system from liability, and on a good day hopefully manages some of the risk for the student.

The student is still at risk from others, still not necessarily capable of handling the risk themselves, and society as a whole is no better and probably worse off.

Going off on a different 'risk' tangent.

NurtureShock says "Teens need opportunities to take good risks". Instead of teens taking a negative risk in the backseat of a car, they can join a robotics team and learn how to take positive and safer risks, like a risky game strategy, a risky robot design, how to make a business decision about their team, etc. Learning how to fail, and succeed here is preferable to doing it as an employee or adult head of household.

A society that has eliminated all risks will also eliminate all chance of success and maintaining a leadership position in the world. You only have to look to the other side of the world where they tried to eliminate the risk of sin by implementing the burka. They are stuck in the stone age.

I am all for eliminating risks where it can be done intelligently. But fire walling off the population by age and gender isn't going to get it done.

Preventing adult / student interaction in a non-classroom environment is backward thinking and doesn't reflect how students really learn.

Students today just do not get enough interaction with responsible adults. When I grew up I interacted with a lot of adults. Some were great, most were good, and a couple of them creeped me out, but I knew how to run away and take care of myself.

An acquaintance of mine, Vietnam era veteran Clebe Mcclary once told me when he was a kid he had a 'drug' problem. His dad 'drug' him to work, drug him to church, drug him to school, drug him fishing, and paraphasing - 'drug him to a lot of rich experiences that allowed him to develop into a man' -

I had the same 'drug' problem. It worked out for me and I personally think a lot of other kids could use a nice dose of appropriate and healthy adult interaction.

Ed

[DonRotolo]

Hmmm. Why not ban the behavior that is causing problems - inappropriate contact - rather than banning the medium?

Hey, waitaminnit: Inappropriate contact IS already banned...

[Koko Ed]

I try to remind our kids to be mindful of what you post online especially when it comes to FIRST (one of our students had a meltdown on Facebook and put a very angry status update about another team. I begged her to take it down and had a private message conversation about it so she could understand why it wasn't a good thing to do and not everyone on that team was a bad person). Too many people have worked too long and too hard to have the selfish actions of one person derail our teams reputation because they want to vent online.

[ebarker]

So there you go. Don says in one simple sentence all that needed to be said. I ramble on forever and forever......................

[Nemo]

The main result of this type of policy overkill is to hinder people who have common sense and integrity. As Don said, rules already exist to disallow inappropriate interactions between students and teachers. A strict ban is pointless, because any district can fire a teacher for unprofessional conduct given that it has administrators who are prepared to do their job. All of the social media shenanigans described in the article stand out as quite obviously unprofessional.

At different times I use email, phone, text messaging, and Twitter to coordinate various logistical aspects of the team. A smart school policy allows this type of positive communication to take place. I'm glad I work in a district where the administrators have some common sense about this stuff. Instead of a strict ban on social media use, we have had open discussions in faculty meetings about what types of communications are appropriate. It is something to be mindful of, to be sure.

[ebarker]

The amount of work that a team can get done via texting is simply amazing. Team news goes via email and a private facebook group.

[JohnSchneider]

Actually, I think having to converse with both mentors and sponsors, in a social media medium, teaches the students how to be respectful and cautious in what they say.

[the man]

I feel that all the students are young adults and should be treated as such. I fail to see how any interactions on Facebook or cellphones could negatively affect students. I feel that school districts are afraid of this new form of media interaction. Not to mention the scare the media puts on very selective events. I am good friends with all my mentors I have no problem talking to them online or in person. I dont see any real problem.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Interesting twist now that many schools require students to have Facebook accounts and use such for posting school work, coordinating team research and generating homework assignments.
For WildStang, we maintain our own forum but have private sections for the subteams where mentors and students can interact in 'public'. i.e. the forums that are closed to non-WildStang members are open to all adults, parents, and teachers. Private interactions ( face to face or electronically) between student and adult are not allowed.

[Phyrxes]

Our school district implemented a ban on social media interaction with current students by faculty and staff, and as such our team is limited in communication methods.

Right now we distribute most team information by a Google group e-mail list that both our parents and students are subscribed to. Any text, twitter, or Facebook interaction is student organized and executed.

It is a pain since most of our students do not check their e-mail regularly unless they have a smartphone that it is sent to.

[JamesCH95]

I unfreinded all of the students I had friended on Facebook after learning that at least one of our sponsoring school's policy forbids teachers and staff being facebook friends with students. I feel that, for better or worse, I should respect the policy of any schools that are involved with our team.

[Jon236]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Interesting twist now that many schools require students to have Facebook accounts and use such for posting school work, coordinating team research and generating homework assignments.
For WildStang, we maintain our own forum but have private sections for the subteams where mentors and students can interact in 'public'. i.e. the forums that are closed to non-WildStang members are open to all adults, parents, and teachers. Private interactions ( face to face or electronically) between student and adult are not allowed.

By simply making electronic communication non-private (by using e-lists, say to the Programming Team), the issues of inappropriate conversations go away. In Scouts, adults need to have another scout present. The same should apply to use of social media. This simply makes sense. Don't ban communication; just let the sun shine in!