Teachers should not be allowed to contact students through social media.

The downside is evident in the slew of tech-related scandals over the past year. Last October a Pennsylvania math instructor pleaded guilty to texting a 16-year-old student and asking for naked photos, promising extra credit if he was "turned on." In Texas, a high school teacher was sentenced to five years in prison after exchanging hundreds of pages of texts with an 18-year-old student before inviting him to her home and having sex with him and four other students. (1) When students and teachers are friends on social media sited it is clear that things can get out of hand very quickly. There need to be boundaries of what can and cannot be done online. The relationship between teacher and student should stay in the classroom and does not need to venture out for any reason. Despite being tech-savvy, teens often don't realize that once they "friend" a teacher on Facebook, he can see everything they post on the site"party videos, snarky comments, soul-baring confessions. And that can place educators in an awkward position. An instructor, for example, might find it impossible to judge a student fairly after reading profane comments or viewing compromising photos. (1) Teachers can change their opinions of students after they have seen what they post on their accounts online. If they see something that is offensive they might tend to judge that particular student a little more harshly than they might have done before. Also, if a teacher suspects abuse in anyway after reading something that a student has posted they are legally obligated to report it to the authority and this can cause problems for both sides. I can imagine that no teacher would want to report something that they saw on a social media site and cause problems for everybody involved and it turns out to be nothing at all. This goes the same way for a student seeing something on a teachers Facebook page or Twitter account that maybe the teacher does not want to student to be seeing. "The number of school personnel having inappropriate contact with students has been just exploding all across the country," state Sen. Diane Allen, R-Burlington, a sponsor of the bill, told The Star-Ledger. "... It's social media that's really to blame. There's just so many ways school personnel can contact and have relationships with students." (2) With the internet and cell phones, teacher and student relationship have become bigger problems than they were before. It is way too easy for them to chat and meet up which can lead down a dangerous path. "A police officer had taken a student in custody and was looking at his phone because he had been arrested for shoplifting. He was looking at text messages going back and forth and it turned out it was the teacher. They were getting ready to go out on a camping trip, just the two of them." (3) This should never be allowed to happen. Teachers and students do not need to be going on camping trips alone. But yet another reason why they should not be allowed to communicate using social media/cell phones. I think relationships should stay on the professional level when dealing with students and teachers. There is never any need for it to be anything more. (1)http://www.familycircle.com... (2)http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com... (3)http://www.wsfa.com...