Confidentiality and Social Media

Building students' rapport with peers, honoring their integrity, and providing opportunities for them to grow academically, behaviorally, and socially are critical components of the teacher-student relationship. The most effective teachers expertly interweave these components into students' educational experience, all while teaching reading, mathematics, science, social studies, language arts, health, music, art, physical education, and an exhausting list of required subjects and topics.

What happens when our students leave our classrooms? When we've had a long day? When our friends and family "won't believe what happened today?" ... Are we still honoring students' and families' integrity? Ethical integrity deals with the maintenance of a person's "wholeness." While we are bound to standards of confidentiality as it relates to student records, it is the ethical integrity, or professionalism, which should guide our decisions to share a good story.

No member of the professions can

escape these ties to the community
since they constitute the very
reason for the existence of the
professions. Thus, professional
integrity begins with this necessary
responsibility to serve the
fundamental need of the community.

--- BRIG GEN MALHAM M. WAKIN, USAF, RETIRED

 

 The following articles are gentle reminders of our enormous responsibility as educators to serve students and their families with professional integrity.

Confidentiality and Our Small World

Facebook Guide for Educators

Social Media for Teachers