45. With teaching comes Great Responsibility

We live in a world that is saturated with technology.  I did not grow up in this world.  I didn’t have to deal with iPods, iPad, cell phones with internet, social media, and information at the tips of our fingers.  If this sounds familiar, I did write something on technology and how our students are affected before, so I am not going to write about that now.  What I want to say is simply this: we need boundaries.  Social media is something we as teachers have to deal with on a daily basis.  I could go one direction here and discuss cyber-bullying and how it affects our students at school, but I’m not.  Again I say we need to set boundaries.  I am not my students’ friend.  Repeat that with me… I AM NOT MY STUDENTS’ FRIEND!  I am here to teach them not befriend them.  I have to be in control. I have to be professional.

What I see today is that teachers are accepting friend requests on Facebook and other social media from their students.  This behavior ends up affecting how our students’ view us and can lead to temptation where there shouldn’t be any.  WE NEED TO STOP.  I have a rule.  I will not accept a friend request on a social media site from a student until they graduate.  I have a friend who won’t accept requests until the student graduates college.  I also have all of my social media as protected as I can from prying eyes.  With that said, I do not post anything lewd or unsavory on my pages.  I don’t write posts with foul language and I often try to censure my thoughts before I post things on an open forum.  I don’t post pictures of me with alcohol.  The thing is if I want to have a drink, I am a responsible adult, I can.  Its legal, but do I want to set that example for my students or have parents talking about what I do in my time? No.

Why do I do go through all of this trouble and safeguarding?  The answer is simple, I am employed by the public.  If I bash the school or say inappropriate things about the school or students on a public forum not only does it make me look bad, but it makes the school look bad.  I do not want to loose my job.  Honestly though, it is more because if I friend my students or word gets out that I am behaving inappropriately I will inevitably loose my students’ respect and therefore will loose my authority in the classroom.

When you are a teacher, especially of older students, it can be hard to separate yourself from them.  New teachers are often likely to fall victim to either befriending students or being too harsh.  You have to find that happy medium between the two.  I was harsh as a new teacher at the beginning, but eventually I became more laid back.  I can honestly say I am one of the most laid back teachers at my school, but I refuse to become a friend to my students.  I always draw a line between us.  I am a good role model and I am respected.  I cannot be those things if I am my students’ friend.  New teachers and even older ones can fall into a cycle with their students that they don’t want to be in.  They will talk too candidly about their lives and they know too much about their students’ lives.  Don’t get me wrong, I have good relationships with my students.  However, I am not in the role of friend, but more of the role of mom.  I have seen many teachers fall into situations that are borderline inappropriate because they are too close to their students.  We have to safeguard ourselves as well as them.

So please, please, safeguard yourselves.  Do not accept students friend requests on Facebook or any other social media site.  You are not their friend.  You are their teacher and you should be respected.

9. Leave it at home.

When you become a teacher you deal with a lot of emotions on a daily basis.  Being an art teacher, I have a different relationship with my students.  My classroom is open.  Students talk about almost anything and feel comfortable enough with me that they talk to me about fears about the future and personal stuff happening now in their lives.  I have made many referrals to the social worker.  This line of work is emotionally draining for any teacher.  At the end of the day I feel so drained.

My personal life is personal and I try to leave it at home when I am at work.  I also try to leave work at work.  It is easier, for me at least, to leave work at work.  I don’t usually take a lot of work home.  Family time is important and there is little place for the baggage of work when I am playing with my two kids.  That being said it still bleeds through sometime.  Just like at school sometimes our personal lives bleed into our professional lives.

Monday morning was a bad morning.  Getting the kids, my own kids, ready involved a lot of resistance.  I have to say I never quite recovered my bearings that day.  It set the tone for my whole day.  I had a student skip my class I so rarely have discipline problems to deal with anymore, one of my classes behaved like imbeciles because I had a block teacher come in and heaven forbid they behave like normal, and students kept cutting themselves because they didn’t listen to my instruction.  My whole day felt like a fog.  Today I am cringing, wondering how my classes will recover.  Not to say that this stuff wouldn’t have happened if I had a good morning, but I probably would have been in a mind-set to deal with it better.  I should have left it at home, but I didn’t.

This separation is hard even after years of teaching.  Work affects home and home affects work.  That is just the way it is.  I tell my students funny stories about my kids and I have students babysit my kids.  There is no true separation, but trying to keep a level of professionalism and making sure you don’t take your bad day out on your students is important.