I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be engaged.

This past school year I had a ‘Parents as Partners’ section in my newsletter and I thought I’d share the monthly sections here. These aren’t really about creative engagement of parents in your school, but rather parenting suggestions to help maintain consistency of expectations both at home and at school.

Parents as Partners: Questions & Advice

I am happy to offer some advice to parents about supporting your child’s learning. However, please note that I will often answer questions with questions since I believe that there is no such thing as the ‘perfect parent’ and what works in one family or with one kid, may not work as well with others.

Children and Computer Time

Here is a question I often hear: How much computer time should my child have?

(Or how much ‘screen time’, since television time can also be a concern.)

Here are my questions to you. Again, there is no ‘right’ answer here, but discussing this as parents, and/or as a family, can help you decide what your limits and comfort zones are:

How long does your child spend on the computer or in front of the TV? Are you comfortable with that amount of time? Have you discussed this with your child?

Do you know what your child does on the computer or what he/she watches on TV?

Is the computer in a central location in the house? Is there a better place for it?

Does your child have a computer, or internet access, or TV in their room? If so, is it on when you ask them to have it off? How do you know what they are doing online? Do you ask them to show you?

Is it a good idea to have a computer or television in a child’s bedroom?

What computer games does your child play? Are these games appropriate for their age? For older kids: What social networks does your child belong to? Are you their online friends?

The younger your child is, the more important it is to determine these things for them. As your child gets older, it would be wise to allow them to negotiate these terms with you, although I firmly believe that parents should maintain the right to make the final decision. (Also see ‘Raising Digital Kids’ below.)

Homework Routines

Often it is difficult to determine just how much homework a child has to do. “I got most of it done at school”, “We don’t have any today”, and “It isn’t due until later”, are all comments that most parents have heard at some point. Here are some questions to discuss.

Does your child have a specific location where they do their homework?
Is it done at a specific time? Are there minimum time requirements for homework?
What are the distractions to homework getting done? Can they be removed?
Do you monitor what is done for homework? Do you talk to your child about their homework? Are you available to help them? Is someone else?
If they have no homework or limited homework, are they ‘done’ or can they spend more time doing review or pre-reading to prepare them for the next day?
Is reading part of their homework or evening routine?
Is there such a thing as too much homework?
When should I speak to my child’s teachers about our homework concerns?

There are no ‘right’ answers here, but discussing these as parents, and/or as a family, can help you decide what your limits and comfort zones are.
Thank you for being our partners in your child’s education!

Students as Partners

Not just parents, students are our partners in education too!
I think we sometime forget that our children have a vested interest in their own education. Often we go to meetings and talk about kids rather than going to a meeting with kids. As students get older, it is important to include them in conversations about their learning. When you are going to a meeting with a teacher or with me, please ask yourself first, ‘Would my child benefit from being at this meeting?’ Sometimes the answer will be ‘No’, but more often than not, they would benefit from contributing to the conversation. Furthermore, it is helpful for your child to see that their parents and teachers are on the same team, working together to make their education the best that it can be.

An Engaged Parent

Often we can get trapped in a routine where our only conversation with our children is ‘What did you do in school today?’
When my children were younger, I stopped asking them that, and started asking them two other questions:

1. ‘Who did you help today’– A question that shows that I value generosity and kindness. I accepted ‘No-one’ as an answer, but that answer decreased over time.

2. ‘What was your favourite part of the day?’ – A question that gave me far more to talk meaningfully to them about than what I got when I asked ‘what they did’.

It doesn’t matter what you ask your child about their day, what matters is that you ask, and that you show a genuine interest in what they say. In my years as an educator I’ve learned that students both want and need to be heard, and students who have parents that they talk to, openly and regularly, tend to be much better equipped to be successful in the future.

Saying “Sorry”

Childhood involves making mistakes. What makes us better, wiser, adults is what we learn and remember after making mistakes, so that we do not make them again. Too often a child will be quick to say “I’m sorry”, without really thinking about what they did, or why they should be sorry, other than the fact that they know they will be in more trouble if they did not say it.

There are actually 3 parts to an apology and when we expect all three parts from our children, then they are more likely to think twice before making a poor choice for a second time. The three parts of an apology are:
1. Saying “Sorry”.
2. Saying what they are sorry for.
3. Making a commitment to do something else, better, next time.
For example:
1. I’m sorry
2. I should not have hit you even though you made me angry.
3. The next time that you say something mean I will tell you that it hurt my feelings and I might even tell a teacher, but I won’t hit you.

In an incident like this I would also want the person who said something mean to apologize. However, often the person who hits or retaliates thinks that the other person started it so their behavior is justified. Here at school we try to show both children that their behaviors contributed to the problem and yet it isn’t about blame, it is about admitting their own contribution and thinking about how they can make things better next time.
When your child says, “Sorry”, does he/she mean it? Are you focused on punishing the behavior or having your child learn from their mistakes?

Value Reading

There are many websites that will read stories for you and your child, which is very helpful for families that do not speak English as their first language at home. The best resource that you have is YOU! Read to your child (in any language) and read with them, or at the same time as them. Show them that you love reading!

Report Cards

Report card time can be both exciting and scary for a child. We all want our children to be the best that they can be. As tempting as it is to focus on the letter grades on the last page of the report, please take the time to read the comments (translating them to your language if necessary). Comments can provide you, your child, tutors & other teachers, and future institutions with concrete and specific information about your child’s progress.

Your child’s teachers have taken time to carefully analyze what your child is able to do, and provided details about the specific things that he or she are working on – in every subject. This snapshot is a wealth of data about where your child is right now, and what teachers are working on to help your child be more successful. Talk to your child about their report card comments, and also about their work habits too if those need improving or commending.

Spend some time finding out what your child likes and dislikes about their report cards and ask them what they are proud of, and what they would like to improve? We learn from our mistakes and if we come to school knowing everything then there really is no purpose for school. In the end, it is our hope that every child leaves school with a love for learning and so report cards should be an opportunity to seek new opportunities to learn.

When seeking improvements from your child, set learning targets rather than letter grade targets. Ask your child what skills, such as proofreading, note taking, and editing, that they can work on and help them determine a schedule or plan to meet their goals to improve. As always, continue to show an interest in what your child does at school and they will be far more likely to find future success than if they are punished or rewarded for letter grades.

Photosynthesis and Learning

Students learn that plants make sugars using the energy of the sun. A byproduct of this process, called photosynthesis, is oxygen but the goal of the process is to produce food, not oxygen. In a similar way, marks are the byproduct, and not the goal of learning. We all want our children to be successful students but sometimes our approach to this is not an approach that successfully motivates our children. Asking a child about how much they liked a project and asking them questions like, “If you could change one thing to make this better, what would you have done?” will go a lot further to improve their future success than just worrying about the marks they get, or rewarding or punishing them based on their marks. We all want our children to do well and get good marks, but let us please remember to promote a love of learning (the goal) not marks (the byproduct), and we will be sure to see more positive results from our children. (post link)

Giving Children Choice

We make a lot of decisions for our children. This is a good thing, since children do not always make the best choices for themselves. But often we don’t give children enough choices when they are older, or we give them too many choices when they are younger. Here are some strategies for giving students choices. What you have to ask yourself is, “Am I giving my child good choices?”, “Am I giving my child enough choices?”, and “Are the choices I give them legitimate?”

Here are some examples to help guide your answers to the above questions.

“Am I giving my child good choices?”

A bad choice: “Do you want to go and brush your teeth?” ~ What if they say no? A good choice: “Do you want to brush your teeth before or after you put on your pajamas?” ~This is called an embedded command as brushing teeth is not a option, when this is done is where the choice comes in.

“Am I giving my child enough choices?”
After school, are there times when your child can decide what they want to do, or is all their time structured? Do your children (sometimes) have a say in where you will go out for dinner? Do you ask them for their opinion when shopping?

“Are the choices I give them legitimate?”
Sometimes we offer ‘no win’ choices to our children: “Come here right now or else you are in big trouble” ~ Either way they are in trouble!

When dealing with a tough situation (with older students) here is a simple strategy: Either give them 3 options, not 2, as this makes the decision easier for them, or you can make the choice open-ended, (“When are you going to get your homework done this weekend?). Then, make sure they follow through with which choice they make, even if it isn’t your ideal choice!
If we want our children to feel empowered and that they have some control over their own lives, then it is important that when we give them choices, we actually allow those choices to happen!

Raising Digital Kids

The ICD (International Club of Dalian) invited me to run a presentation titled, “Education in the Digital Age: A Reorientation for Parents”. The intentions of this presentation/workshop were to:
• Examine children’s use of technology.
• Increase awareness of the potential challenges around technology use.
• Learn practical, proactive parenting strategies to maintain connections with children using the media they are using.
• Learn how to guide children in appropriate and safe interactions on the Internet.
• Find support and resources to better understand these issues.
Here is the web-page ‘hand-out‘ with many questions that can promote conversations for your family to help guide your understanding of what guidelines and expectations your family should have when thinking about students and their digital (screen) time. (post link)

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Please contribute your thoughts and feedback. Also, I’d love some ideas for new things to share with my parents to help them be our partners in their child’s education.

One of my favourite sayings these days is:

‘Teachers should be the lead learners in the classroom.’

I think that if a teacher goes into a class believing first and foremost that they are ‘model learners’ and that they will learn with their students, then that teacher will create a meaningful and engaging learning environment for their students.

I’ve always been a fan of Kevin Honeycutt, I think he is creative and his podcasts are great. Well now he shares this video that tells the tale about why we need teachers to learn. Enjoy!

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Related posts: Shifting Education and Hargreaves and the 4th Way [Part 2].

Happy Holidays to everyone!

On Thursday our school held our Holiday Concert. Below I’ve highlighted 2 of the performance videos.

We called it our Holiday Concert, but in hindsight it was just a Christmas Concert. It wasn’t intentional, it was unintentional bias, but all of the songs performed were either Christmas songs, or songs that we tend to associate with Christmas. Next year I hope we can make it more of a world holiday affair, but for now enjoy my two favourite performances. Considering that all of the classes started practicing for this concert just 2 weeks earlier, it isn’t a surprise that the ones that I like are from teachers with music degrees. The first video is of two classes, Ms Shae & Yee’s class and my wife’s class, and includes my daughter Cassie. The second video is of Mr. Underhay’s class. Enjoy!

Christmas Comes from the Heart is wonderful! It sounds like a choir that practiced for months.

And this class combined their talents to perform a not-so-silent ska version of Silent Night.

Two other honourable mentions go to 4 year old Max’s Cello Solo and a fun version of Dancin’ on the Rooftop.

Enjoy the performances, and for those of you that celebrate Christmas, a very happy day to you. For those of you that celebrate other festivals and ceremonies this time of year, I’d love for you to link to some performances to help inspire our holiday concert next year.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

To the unshifted: Shift or retire… regardless of your age and number of years experience. We have the means to teach differently, now! It doesn’t start tomorrow, it starts today. Pick one thing you don’t like about your practice and change it. Find one thing that engages your students, and has them take over the learning that happens in the room, and do it. Empower, inspire, engage and be the lead learner in your classroom or your school.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

To the shifting: Do not go quietly into your classroom. It is an extremely exciting time to be in education. Do not be overwhelmed. A great waterfall begins with a single drop. Information flows too quickly to absorb all that we want to. Things will not flow for you if you try to do too much. If you try a new tool, ask yourself why am I using this? Do not confuse the pointing finger with the moon. What is the learning intention? Stay true to what you want to accomplish and take advantage of tools to help you and your students find your way. Find small successes on your path, let good work and engaged students be your reward.

What we think, we become.

To the shifted: You have an obligation to serve others. The students in your room are a priority, but so too are your colleagues. You are a leader by the default of knowing the way. Nurture your colleagues like you nurture your students in your class. Be the lead learner. Learn with them. Share your enthusiasm and accept your position of leadership with grace and humility.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

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Photo: “Behind Buddha” photographed by me, David Truss,

at the Famine Temple near Xi’an, China

Quotes: Attributed to Buddha

This is Part I of a 3 part series.

Part II: Shifting Learning

Part III: Shifting Attitudes

Related post: Statement of Educational Philosophy

A 2nd year teacher that I keep in touch with sent me an email yesterday:

“Hey Dave!

How do you feel about adding students as friends on Facebook?  I use my Facebook mainly as a communication tool.

I don’t put anything up that I wouldn’t want people to see.  In the evening, my students have trouble getting in touch with me via [district] email, so I’ve had a few messages via facebook (which they can do without being my friend.)

I have had a few requests from legitimate students.  There have been a few requests from students I don’t want on my list…and I have denied their request.”

Here was my response and a few points I’d like to make afterwards.

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The fact is that I’m not a huge fan of Facebook, just because I’m already connected to so many people online and it feels like just one more place I have to go. Also I tend to get stuck talking to old friends and former students who just want to say ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ rather than having meaningful or learning conversations. That has changed a bit since moving to China.

- So yes, to answer your question, I do have students as friends on Facebook.

3. I put students on a very ‘Limited Profile’. For my Facebook use, I chose that they can’t see my wall. Why? Because I don’t use facebook much and I don’t feel like monitoring it often. Of all the setting I choose, this is the one most likely to be different from other teachers who see Facebook as a place to connect with students.

Something important to be aware of with Facebook and settings: When you join a group or a fan club etc. your profile becomes open to all the other members for a limited time, (I don’t remember the timeline or know if this has changed or not). This is a great example of why, if you are a teacher on Facebook or anywhere else you MUST be professional at all times. We don’t know when or why Facebook will change their rules like this? We don’t know what Facebook does with our records or how secure what we have said in the past will be protected in the future? They are a private company and have private motives.

On the point of being careful about what you do and say online, here is a great lesson for teachers and students alike: Check out my blog as of July 14th, 2008. I got this from the WayBackMachine on the Internet Archive. I cannot change anything on this permanent record! Digital text is (or at least can be) forever!

4. If I see something inappropriate then I say so:

Example:

Hi [Student Name],

I hope things are good with you and that you are enjoying [Secondary School]!

I’m not sure why you thought I’d be interested in joining:

“Support my cause, F*** The Police. Help by joining, donating, or inviting your friends!”

Not really appropriate. Hopefully you won’t be sending similar things like that to me because I can’t have that kind of stuff in my facebook community.

It is nice to stay connected, but if you wanted to remove me as a friend, I understand. And likewise, if I get invitations such as this then I’ll need to remove you as a friend. Hopefully this won’t be something either of us feel we need to do.

Good luck with exams, but first, enjoy your Christmas break!

Mr. Truss

Also, with kids that I don’t know that well, I usually send them a ‘Thanks for inviting me’ message:

Hi [student name], Thanks for inviting me into your network. Have a great weekend!

I always find it a bit strange when a kid I barely know invites me to facebook, with my rule #2 above, I accept them, but I send a ‘thanks’ message just so that I have evidence that they started the friendship. This might be a good idea to do with all student connections.

5. I do not erase any messages between me and students. If they want to quote me out of context, then I want to have a record of what that context was.

Read my last post on the topic for more details: Facing Facebook

This does not mean that we get ‘chummy’ with our students online… we are simply a significant adult presence, modeling appropriate behavior, and connecting with them in a meaningful, respectful way. The internet is no place for an unsupervised playground!

Also check these other two posts out and read the comments on all 3 to see how differently teachers look at this.

Social Networking Sites: Public, Private or What? by Danah Boyd (Found via Dana Woods)

“When a teen is engaged in risky behaviour online, that is typically a sign that they’re engaged in risky behaviour offline. Troubled teens reveal their troubles online both explicitly and implicitly. It is not the online world that is making them troubled, but it is a fantastic opportunity for intervention.”

Teachers and Facebook by Dana Huff

“One positive aspect of using Facebook is that nothing else is as quick in terms of communicating with students. I have often asked students to get together on Facebook and study or to spread a message I want to make sure they get. Because I am not friends with students who don’t request it, I can’t use it as a reliable method to contact all of my students. I created a Facebook page, and they can become fans of that page without being my friend, but again, it’s not something I feel comfortable requiring.”

“We” -meaning teachers/parents/adults -need to be on places like Facebook, but “we” as individuals have a right to choose: ‘Do I want to be on facebook?’ and ‘Do I want to be friends with students there?’ If the answer to both questions are ‘Yes’ then we must figure out what our comfort zone is with connecting with students in a meaningful and thoughtful way. And whether or not we choose to connect with students on sites like Facebook, we must be professional in our online conduct… always!

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A few final thoughts.

I firmly believe that districts and schools have no right to tell teachers that they can not connect with students on social networks. It would be like saying, ”As a teacher, I don’t want you going to the shopping mall at the end of the street and if you are there, you certainly can’t talk to the students that go there.”

However, I also believe that as teachers our professional code of conduct extends into the digital world and we need to be accountable and professional.

Also, as I said in the comments on Dana Huff’s post:

Personally I wouldn’t use Facebook in the classroom. I think there are so many good tools out there, like Ning networks for example, that I’d rather not take a site my students like to socialize on and somehow make that site ‘work’ for them.

Forcing kids to participate on Facebook, or insisting that they add classmates as friends or that they must become fans of a group is not an ideal way to create a meaningful learning space.

And finally, I’ll end with this from my Facing Facebook post:

If we (educators and parents) don’t participate with students online, then we run the risk of having misguided or inexperienced friends, or worse yet bullies, becoming greater influences than us in their lives.

Students today will have a digital footprint. Are we going to let them figure it out on their own? Or will we be there with them, educating them along the way?

This was written on a scrap piece of paper while doing some ‘big thinking’ with Heidi Hass Gable. I’m sharing it exactly as it was written, but adding links to some of my other posts to liven it up a bit… Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

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Students Today

-> relate differently to toys, digital tools and each other, compared to just a few years ago.

-> are not digitally competent in the same way as each other.

-> connect, learn and socialize in online communities that are richer in content and engagement than traditional ways of classroom learning.

Relevance to Teachers

-> Students and teachers have different digital competencies and there is not an intentional  roadmap for students or teachers to follow in order to improve their digital literacy skills.

A couple days ago Heidi Hass Gable shared this with me:

This is from her 10 year old daughter who said,
“Mom, I have mostly the same homework as yesterday, so I just circled it, wrote copy, then wrote paste on today’s page.”

Last week my 9 year old asked me a question. My answer was ‘I don’t know’ so she got up, walked over to the computer and asked Google.

Information is now easily copied, pasted, edited, added to, archived, and accessed. We can look at these two events above and think ‘how cute’, or we can think of them having a little deeper meaning.

Students today experience the fluidity and availability of information in a different way than we did. Unlike my parents, I’m not spending money on a Junior Encyclopedia for my kids. Their bookshelf is the same shelf you are reading this post on, and it is richer, multi-modal, more interactive, easier to access and freely available.

So how should this change what we do in education? How much focus should we place on rote memorization? Should we spend more time teaching kids how to find the information they want more efficiently? What do we want them to do with information?

What’s the purpose of school? How has this changed in the last 2-3 years? And how will this change in the next 5 years?

Sonya Woloshen is a new teacher this year. She is a job-sharing French Immersion teacher at our school 2 days a week, and at another Middle School the other 3 days.

Sonya did a short pro-d session this afternoon with some of our teachers. Her session title: “I took the red pill”.

She ran through using Powerpoint/Keynote, Screencasts, and podcasts. But time and again her emphasis was not on the technology or the tools, but on the meaningful engagement of students. It was about students learning transferable skills and teaching each other as they learned.

Sonya also highlighted how she and her students use ipods/iTouch/mp3s in her class. Here is her ipod-touch-proposal she made to our Director of IT. She also wrote an article on ipods for CueBC.

For this presentation, she showed the first video here to start things off. Here are a few quotable quotes from her session:

“In 5 years I want to run a paperless class.”

“As a new teacher, I don’t think of it as a issue when one student doesn’t have the technology available. That’s not a problem, just something to work around.”

“I push technology in every project I do, but of course I make it available to my students to do a poster or paper presentation if they want to or if they don’t have the technology available to them at home.”

“What if you don’t know everything? Students love knowing more than you and teaching you.”

Sonya is a digital teacher. She gets that it isn’t about the technology but about engaging students in meaningful ways. She is brand new and yet ahead of the curve. What I really liked about this presentation was that she didn’t just ‘sell’ technology, she mentioned the challenges too… from her iTouch being stolen (it was returned) to technical issues causing her to load programs on 25 iTouch/ipods only to have to reload 15 of them the next day when students should have been using them. These are not deal-breakers, simply challenges to overcome.

As she talked I thought about how many teachers get fed up with technology and give up. Imagine a teacher going to a photocopier and it doesn’t work, so they say, “That’s it, I’m never using that again!” Or a person getting behind the steering wheel of a car for the first time, struggling, and then never driving again.

What makes Sonya a Digital Teacher is that she sees the value that tech tools offer and she overcomes the challenges they present (fearlessly). Sonya understands the potential of POD’s, and she is starting her career at a point that I had to evolve to:

I’ve seen a real shift in my own thinking recently. Forget whining about access, disregard the slow speed of change, get over the obstacles! Go after meaningful results. Engage and empower students. Be a leader and a role model.   Opportunities, Access & Obstacles

It is exciting and inspiring to see a new teacher, confidently and fearlessly sharing her learning with a group of teachers, who in turn are equally interested in, and engaging with, new teaching and learning practices. Kids today are part of a YouTube Generation and they need digital teachers to help guide and inspire them to be lifelong learners, equiped for a future that I myself cannot truly imagine.

Some people say ‘kids will be kids’… Some adults have never forgotten what it felt like to be a victim.

What happens when adults are not present?

Sometimes kids do things they shouldn’t do. Sometimes kids make choices based on what their friends do rather than on what they know is the right thing to do.

Sometimes the bully wins:

It happens on playgrounds, in cafeterias, and friend’s basements, at parties & school dances, and yes, it happens online too.

Parents supervise their kids on playgrounds, and teachers supervise students in our schools…

Who supervises these kids online? Whose responsibility is it?

Whether it is a responsibility to be present online or not, what right do we as educators have to be online? Should our role change what we do on sites like Facebook? On a more personal note: Who are my online ‘friends’? Should I be ‘friends’ with my students online?

Here’s what I think:

When facing the issue of Facebook,
our students are there,
and we should be there too!

I am not advocating for necessary presence, and I am not advocating for us taking on a burden of responsibility. I am saying that we should have the choice to be there and we should have the choice to interact with students on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Some educators will choose to be on Facebook, some will choose to interact there with students, some won’t. My concern is that I’m hearing instances of student teacher faculty advisors, teachers and principals, and even districts telling educators that they should remove their Facebook profiles.

This really happened:

1. Student A created an “I hate Teacher X” group on Facebook. The students in the group start saying really nasty things about Teacher X. Student B joins this group, however this student is ‘friends’ on Facebook with another teacher, Teacher Y. So, when Teacher Y goes onto Facebook she sees an update informing her that Student B has joined this “I hate Teacher X” group and she reports it to her Administration. Teacher Y also gets the group shut down. How far could this have gone?
2. Student C decides to create a “Student D is a Fag” group. Student D has no idea this exists. Teacher Z finds the site and shuts it down when it only has 3 students in it and 34 unanswered invitations to join the group. How far could this have gone? How many students were taught a lesson when they clicked ‘Join this group’ only to find that the group was shut down?
3. Teacher W sees that Student E has joined the “National Skip Day” group. In the hall the next day Teacher W says to Student E, “I hope you aren’t planning to skip my class on that day”. Guess who shows up to school on National Skip Day! How many of Student E’s friends were influenced by this decision?
   
4. Mr. Truss gets a video with inappropriate language put on his Funwall by a former student who is still in High School. He sends a private message politely asking the student why she thought that video would be appropriate to send to him. The former student replies very apologetically, and although she has not sent any other videos, she also did not ‘unfriend’ Mr. Truss. Do you think that she is now ‘more aware’ of who her audience is on Facebook?

I wrote this in the reflection section of a previous post:

If we (educators and parents) don’t participate with students online, then we run the risk of having misguided or inexperienced friends, or worse yet bullies, becoming greater influences than us in their lives. Gordon Neufeld calls it ‘peer orientation’ in his book: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. This does not mean that we get ‘chummy’ with our students online… we are simply a significant adult presence, modeling appropriate behavior, and connecting with them in a meaningful, respectful way. The internet is no place for an unsupervised playground!

That said, as educators we are professionals and we have the need to be professional in our interactions with students… everywhere.

Principal Bruce Carabine and Technology and Curriculum Coordinator James McConville worked on some advice for educators who use Facebook. Here is what they came up with:

Be sure your profile is set-up in such a way that it is private. Only those you invite to be your friends should be allowed to view the content of your profile.

Make a decision about who is going to be in your friend’s group. If you are including current and former students, it’s a good idea take a conservative approach to the content of your page. Imagine the parents of one of your student’s were looking through it. Would they be comfortable with what they saw?

Perception is everything. You may want all of your students to be your friends on Facebook. Don’t be the one to invite them. Wait until they invite you to join their Facebook as a friend. Also, when they invite you, send them a ‘thank you for inviting me message’ so that you have a record of who invited whom.

Don’t download pictures of current and former students onto your hard drive.

Monitor regularly what others write on your wall. If there is anything that is inappropriate, remove it promptly. Be sure you deal with those who put questionable content on your site. Repeat offenders should be removed from your friend’s list.

We are thoughtful and intentional in our engagement with students in our schools and our classrooms… and we should be thoughtful and intentional in our engagement with students online.

The one thing that I’ve avoided so far is the idea of responsibility. Who is ultimately responsible for student behavior online? First and foremost I believe the answer to be the students themselves. Next in line should we want to take the ‘blame’ approach would be their parents. But I’m not interested in blame. I’m interested in students being respectful citizens in all of my communities, on and offline. I also choose to accept some responsibility and care for what goes on in my communities.

As I mentioned before, Dave Sands does some parent presentations:

The presentation delivers a number of key ideas: Technology feeds student needs. Technology isn’t going away. Parents need to figure out what they value, and they need to understand and engage with the technology their kids are using. If parents want influence with their children, they are far more likely to get it engaging from the inside rather than policing from the outside.

Take note educators… we too are far more likely to engage students from the inside rather than policing from the outside!

The irony of it all is that I don’t really like Facebook, and I don’t really use it that much. I choose to show students a limited, and rather boring profile on Facebook. So the reality is that since I have a large digital footprint, students can find out a lot more about me in many other places besides Facebook.

What I do like about Facebook is that it has allowed me to have some really amazing interactions that I may never have had otherwise: Students sharing something they have learned with me; A former student that I was really worried about reconnecting with me, and thus I’m able to see him doing well for himself; A former student telling me that as a teacher I made ‘ the biggest difference in her life’.

…And I’ve been able to teach some impromptu lessons about appropriate online behavior along the way. So far, every time that I’ve mentioned something that I thought was inappropriate in my Facebook community, I have received an apology or removal of the inappropriate content, and not once have I been removed as a friend as a result.

So I ask you… should we be told ‘as educators’ that we should remove our Facebook profiles? Is this something we should fear? Should we engage with our students online? Or should we just police the bullies and support the victims after the fact?

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*Update: I followed up on some of these ideas in my post Facebook Revisited which was inspired by a teacher asking me “How do you feel about adding students as friends on Facebook?”.

Heidi Hass Gable has done something special!

Here is her presentation, What I Want for My Children:

Her post simply says this:

My hope is that it will move you, it will motivate you,
it will make you think and it will inspire you to get involved in your child’s education,
to support your teachers and to be part of creating great schools!

Her subtitle: ‘Creating Great Schools — Together’ gets immediately to the heart of the matter.

The power of the message comes from the action she asks from parents…

… and what does she ask of teachers and all other educational partners? The exact same thing!

This comes shortly after the 5½ minute mark. This is what changes this video from a parent’s perspective to an educational partner’s perspective.

“If we want these things for our kids, then we have to do them for our teachers as well.”

Doing what’s best for our students, our kids, is what education is all about. It is what a collective WE want.

‘What I want for my children’ is a move in the right direction of meaningful collaboration that can only make our schools better.