Social Media Policies
Seems lots of people are working hard these days to establish policies specific to social media and online interactions with staff and students. Specifically, many of these policies are focused on the ways staff are engaging social media both inside and outside the classroom.
My district has recently started exploring the possibility of establishing our own policy, and that drove me to start looking around at what others are doing. What I’ve found has been quite fascinating.
I’m not yet decided on how I think we should approach this exercise, exactly. I do know, however, that I want to make sure we take an approach that will establish policy which will not serve to preclude teachers from using social media. Seems that might prove difficult. As I continue my research, I’m looking for what approach will work best to provide sound guidelines and protections for our students and staff while still affording both the opportunity to actualize the benefits that such media forms present. And I’m left to consider the following items that I’ve come across so far in my work.
We must be mindful of free speech considerations. Though, this is a difficult road to navigate given the complex nature of how the First Amendment has been interpreted for public employees. See Garcetti as an example.
My previous district just passed their social media policy. See section 5:135. I’m very curious to see how their policy takes shape as they are now working to create their procedures. There are several issues in the policy that I think might prove very difficult to implement. Especially the parent permission piece.
Papillion-La Vista School District entirely prohibits teachers from engaging students on social networks and strongly discourages them from doing the same with parents or guardians. I’m not sure that’s the way I want to go, but it seems the way many are taking at present. *Update 12-1-10– Please see Josh’s comment below for clarification on Papillion-La Vista School District’s policy. I’m afraid I misrepresented it here, so please read his helpful clarification.
There are also several interesting resources surfacing intended to help institutions with this issue. This site aims to help you quickly build your own policy for your business or district. And recently, the Common Craft folks released their social media in the workplace video to help people better understand the issues involved.
The American School Board Journal also had an excellent article in its December 2010 edition on the subject. The first portion of the article can be found here (my apologies to those of you who don’t have a subscription to read the rest).
As we move forward and see more and more districts begin to policy social media and electronic communications, I hope we’ll see a movement away from the full restriction and more will allow common sense to prevail. Because it seems to me much of this is an old conversation repackaged into a new container. Yes, social media tools are new. But social isn’t. And we’ve been doing that inside and outside of schools for a very long time now. And in many cases, we already have policy for that. And if we restrict teachers from using social media or electronic communications with students, does that mean we restrict them from going to a student’s game or performance after school? Or from answering a phone call in our classroom from them after hours when they need help with homework? Maybe those are unfair comparisons, but they don’t really seem to be to me.
I’d love any direction, feedback, insights, ideas, examples, etc. that you might have on this issue as I know I could use more help on the topic as we explore our options for addressing concerns with social media and electronic communications in our district.