This is a response to a graduate school assignment in an on-line discussion group. I thought it might make sense to post it in here.

In your opinion, should school districts have formal, written policies concerning school personnel’s use of social media? What about regarding teacher student communication outside of school?

Complicated question! Of course a school system should have very specific and clear policies about social media use, but they must be constantly revisited. Due to the fluid and dynamic nature of the evolution of social media, some policies will become obsolete, and some will not go far enough.

I hope the decade or two that I have on almost all of my classmates here might allow me to provide a slightly different point of view.

In January of 1995, I was in my third year of teaching at Boston University and had just finished a graduate degree using a word processor on a Macintosh SE with no connectivity, books I had purchased, scholarly periodical journals to which I had subscribed or had borrowed, the Mugar Library on campus, other area public and academic libraries, and CD ROMs of dissertation abstracts that were updated on a quarterly basis. It was that month that I had to spend a day working in the study lounge so that a "Quad Box" could be installed in my room, an "ethernet cable" was plugged into my Mac, and I was given an index card with login information, a ten minute lesson on how to use Lotus cc:Mail and Netscape, and told to choose an username/e-mail address. Since that moment, I have stayed (at best) about two steps behind most of the world in using technological capabilities.

Twenty-five years of internet connectivity and social media, which is most certainly how I would classify those list-serves ex post facto, has should me much usefulness, hidden among a forest of bad decisions and ill intentions. I've watched Facebook (which I joined in 2007 at the urging of my then college aged nieces and nephews) go from a wild wilderness to a social phenomenon, with much function and value, albeit still entwined in the aforementioned, still robust wilderness. Twitter made NO sense to me when I joined in 2009 at a colleague's suggestion, and I still don't exactly understand why I have an Instagram account. I have a Linkedin account to which I am always amazed that this platform seems to somehow remain dignified and non-controversial. Do they police it better, or did it just hit a groove where we all just let it be what it was meant to be, a source for professional networking and sharing of infotmation. Snapchat and TikTok still look like playgrounds to me, but who knows?

The bottom line is that while new platforms pop up, and often disappear, the truth is that amid political rants, pet photos, home culinary success, and portraits of nostrils, three or four of these platforms have indeed emerged as reliable ways to disseminate and retrieve important information. I think that schools need to recognize this reality, and accept that while polarizing and even inappropriate content are available and perhaps even ubiquitous on Facebook and Twitter, they are also where people will likely happen upon something you need them to know. I doubt I would ever trust it as the soul vehicle for getting out information, but tweeting or posting links to central located websites can be effective, and once an e-mail is written that does the same, it's not a big step to share that same information on the more popular platforms. If I am OK with hanging a concert poster on the door of 7-11, despite the availability of chewing tobacco and adult magazines behind the counter, then I can be OK with a "Chenery Middle School Bands" twitter account.

As far as contact with students, I am 100% behind a policy with a school limiting a connection with them on social media. There is too much at stake for the teacher that rests so much on the quality of decisions made by students. Just as I wouldn't go out with them for a burgers and malteds downtown after school, I will keep a similar distance from them digitally. Our schools, as many do, provide us with excellent digital access to our students via the Google Suites, and that's more than sufficient for any of us as teachers. Knock on wood, the school community seems capable of compartmentalizing the Google Suites for their intended purpose the way that society seems to have done with Linkedin. There are just plain old better places to push boundaries than at these site, it would seem.

As I stated from the start, these policies need regular revisiting. Without a fresh look, Twitter and Facebook would have no presence in the school. Both social media and schools have evolved to a point where they do indeed need to find a way to coexist, and perhaps even grow together.

I have made this point to my students pretty regularly over the last several years:

Many of you have a brilliantly powerful computer that is connected to the rest of the world that you can carry in your pocket, and if we let you, you could in an instant call up some source of information that would enhance your learning, your understanding, and passion. That would be so wonderful if we could let you do that. Here are two reasons we don't:

1) Old grumpy stick-in-the-mud teachers like me are under the impression that would be more more likely to make fun of each other on line, watch videos of skateboard accidents, play Fortnite, and share photos of your nostrils with each other, rather than exploit the wonderful learning opportunities at your fingertips.

2) Old grumpy stick-in-the-mud teachers are absolutely right about that, and you know it.

Maybe someday, but not today.