Friendly, but Unfriended.

I think I have a reputation as a firm, but friendly teacher.  This has led to many students friending me on Facebook.  Perhaps because we use a lot of technology tools and social media in our class, students feel comfortable sending me friend requests.  If they are following me on our our class Twitter page, blogging, and interacting on our Moodle discussion board forums, doesn't it make sense to take the next step and be friends on Facebook?  Not just current students, but a number of past students have found and friended me.  I accepted all of their friend requests.

Until last month.  After thinking long and hard, I unfriended all my students.  It wasn't just because of startling stories of inappropriate Facebook interactions that surface from time to time.  I had long been struggling to stand on the other side of the coin, researching reasons why I should invite Facebook into my classroom.  I know that Missouri teachers are fighting to stay Facebook friends with their students, but I decided I wanted out.

No, I don't post a bunch of inappropriate pictures of me partying on the weekends.  I also don't use Facebook to complain or rant about my students or my job.  I do, however, post pictures of my family, and there are a lot of links and posts I like to share with my close friends.  I'm pretty sure my students got tired of seeing posts of my boys' basketball and baseball game scores.  Also, I don't think they needed to see where my husband and I vacationed on our anniversary.  Yes, I know that I can form groups, and put all my students in one group.  I know I can hide my posts selectively.  But every one of my friends, students or otherwise, can see anything anyone else puts on my wall, and it just got to be too much work to select out groups and individuals every time I posted.  There are other problems too, which finally brought me to my decision.

Lesson Learned:
My students can still communicate with me through Moodle, Twitter, Email, and even Face-to-Face.  I'm still friendly too, just not on Facebook.