Teachers, students should be Facebook friends, officer says
October 19, 2011
Kristin Rushowy
EDUCATION REPORTER
Facebook can — and should — be a teacher’s friend, the Toronto police social media officer told an educators’ conference.
The social networking site can be used for mentoring, building relationships and can help prevent teen suicides, gang activity and even crimes, Const. Scott Mills told more than 100 teachers, principals and social workers at a Canadian Safe School Network conference held Wednesday in Toronto.
“We stopped a Virginia Tech type shooting here in this city,” he said.
In September 2009, an elementary teacher noticed anti-Semitic postings threatening mass shootings of Jewish students on a Toronto university campus through her Facebook connections. She reported it to police and someone was arrested and charged.
(Mills would not identify the university, but it is believed to be York.)
Mills said that instead of blocking social media use, boards would be better off training teachers and then monitoring their use.
Earlier this year, the Ontario College of Teachers recommended teachers not “friend” students on Facebook or text them, but that they could communicate using “established education platforms” such as web pages set up for a class.
The move was seen as a way to protect teachers from online content that could be altered or manipulated, as well as protect students.
Mills said teachers could create a Facebook account for work relationships — apart from an account for personal connections — and any concerns about student safety could be alleviated by proper oversight.
Adult mentorship is crucial, he added, and because teens spend so much time online, that must be carried over to the cyber world.
Mills credited one Toronto high school hall monitor active on Facebook with preventing at least five student suicides.
While Mills said he prefers face-to-face interactions, using social media “increases the connectivity you have with students.”