Facebook, Twitter, Teachers, Coaches and Students?

Facebook, Twitter!

Facebook profiles, Twitter streams, social media that allow a student to connect with a teacher or a coach, good idea or bad?

The question posed to the Bartender and the Life Coach in Episode 11 does not have a simple answer in our opinion.

As an adult in a position of influence, as a teacher or perhaps a coach, means that we carry a certain responsibility level to our students.

If we allow those students to connect with us through social media, are we helping or hindering the positive impact we are attempting to have?

Certain social medias, such as Twitter, are much less interactive than a social media such as Facebook, where your entire life can be displayed. Funny Twitter Cartoon

If you are well versed in the usage of these medias, you can enable certain privacy settings to only allow certain access to certain people.

Most people, however, don’t really know how to use these features to their fullest capacities.

So the question remains, should an adult in a teaching or coaching situation allow their students access to them outside of school?

We believe there are pros and cons to this, both from the standpoint of the teacher and the student.

Imagine a situation where you have a troubled student, a student who could walk down a dangerous path in their lives, but through a “social media” relationship with a person who becomes a “safe” place for them to turn to, their lives are changed for the better. Definitely a pro.

Yet that same situation requires a teacher to be there outside of “work” hours, to take time away from perhaps their own family, to continue their “job”. Potentially a “con”

Or, a student that feels an inappropriate “crush” on a teacher or coach now has an easy venue to communicate privately to that adult, and puts the teacher in an awkward situation, with potential ramifications that could be problematic for the teacher. Definitely a con.

We are certainly very interested in what you, our Drink Guy fans, think.

We would love to know if you have dealt with this, or know someone who has, and what the results were.

And we would love to know what the parents out there think about their children with social media!

So please comment below!

Cheers, The Drink Guy Team!

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