Have you ever dwelled upon the title question? What are your thoughts about this? In this article, I shed light on the topic from my point of view. See if your thoughts match with mine. Read on to find out.
As it seems to me, teachers should not always be available to their students to help out with their problems academically or otherwise. Students should learn to help themselves majority of the time.
Teachers can have fixed timeslots for social networking with their students for example, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3pm to 5pm. They can just announce in class and those students who are interested can network in those timeslots. There is no need for the teachers to put these timeslots on their websites other than their physical counseling hours.
They should maintain their gravity and strictness while still being friendly with their students. They should uphold their respect and air of importance so that students keep their distance without getting too intimate.
Students should be given the impression that teachers are not their friends, colleagues or professional counterparts. So their teachers have the liberty to choose whether or not they want to become part of their social media or professional networks. Even if they do, teachers should carry their authentic images or identities all along so that their students fear them to some extent.
On the other hand, this is the era of modern age and social networking is a modern age facility. So if shy and modest students feel freer to interact online rather than confront directly, teachers should welcome them and be part of their social networks.
But at any rate, I stick to my previous statements that teachers, under no circumstances, should lose their gravity and respect, while taking the pleasure of networking with their students in order to help them out academically or otherwise.
In conclusion, those are my thoughts on whether teachers should have limits on social networking with their students. As having been in the profession of teaching myself, I do regard teachers to be dignified and important, which students should come to respect and show manners and courtesies accordingly even while in the process of social networking.
Now that I have presented my points of views on the issue, what is your opinion about it? Do they resonate with mine? How would you put it? Most likely, your thoughts on the issue are close enough to mine.