Facebook friendships are not the same as friendships in the real world. There are many ways to end a real world friendship. You can do it with a click on Facebook.
Facebook friendships don’t have any real costs. It is far easier than being a real friend. Of course, Facebook friendships can (and sometimes do) become more substantial relationships. However, it is my experience that the friends who will pick you up at the airport, cover your back, or rush to your rescue were that way without Facebook.
So if on the scale of friendship, Facebook friends are lighter weight, what does it matter if you lose a few friends or are rejected by some? If you have several hundred Facebook friends, who cares if one or two drop out or choose not to join your team?
Intellectually, that makes sense. However, if an old college classmate refuses my friendship, it makes me rethink our years together. If a friend disappears from my list, I wonder if I did something to offend. If a family member fails to approve my friendship request, I worry about our real world relationship.
If Facebook friendships are superficial, how light do they have to be before they are meaningless? While many people will not accept a friendship request from a stranger, many accept the request as long as there is some modicum of connection. My policy is I accept any request from anyone I know, even distantly, in the real world. See my post on bring a friend. However, if the connection is thin, I may start the person on limited profile so I can find out how my acquaintance behaves on Facebook. It costs me nothing to be accept the friendship, especially when my acceptance can be qualified. So why do I perseverate when sending a friendship request?
Because rejection hurts just like it did in the junior high lunchroom. Why did that person unfriend me but is still friends with our common friends? What did I do to offend that person? Why is that person friends with me in the real world but not on Facebook? What’s wrong with me?
I use a browser extension that monitors my Facebook friendship list. When I am unfriended or my friendship request is denied or, more passive aggressively, merely ignored, I feel like I did when I was the last one chosen for the team or told I couldn’t sit at a lunch table.
Is it better not to know? Should I turn off my browser extension and shut my eyes? I might feel better (until that person shows up on my feed). Is it possible that those who have unfriended me or refused to be my friends think that I don’t know?
I have come to the conclusion that our approach to Facebook friendship is a mini-mirror of our approach to relationships in general. I love hearing from my former students and, when one of them thinks I have done wrong, I want to make amends. I like seeing pictures of my family and, when one of them is angry with me, I want to work it out. I have never found that burying my head did anything but give me a mouth full of sand.
So I have landed on the policy that I do not unfriend. I may limit access or remove postings from my newsfeed. Likewise, if there is even a modicum of real world connection, I accept the friendship request. While it take only a click to be mean, I can certainly afford to be nice.
Update: Eric Zorn has a recent column on this subject. He suggests that people’s behavior would change if they knew that their former friends were aware of the unfriending. He also notes that he would care about these unfriendings.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The Parent-Teacher Partnership
While teachers’ first responsibility is to their students, we spend a significant amount of time working with parents. Students are best served when their parents and teachers are partners working for the same goals. However, sometimes finding common goals can be challenging.
Recently, lauded teacher Ron Clark wrote a strongly worded column on CNN.com asking parents to work with, rather than against, teachers, administrators, and the educational system. He laments parents who make excuses for their children, treat teachers poorly, or refuse to hear anything but positive things about their children. He states that, “Today, new teachers remain in our profession an average of just 4.5 years, and many of them list ‘issues with parents’ as one of their reasons for throwing in the towel.”
My experience as a parent and a teacher supports Mr. Clark’s contentions. However, there is a surprising flipside: many parents are afraid of contacting teachers! As a parent, I have been shocked at some of the things that have happened in my children’s classrooms and stunned that no one has said a word! Likewise, I fully understand why some teachers would prefer to send an email or do nothing at all rather than directly speak to parents.
Once we have had a negative experience with a parent or teacher, we are less likely to reach out again. Once that teacher (or coach) has said to our child, “We don’t want your parents making a fuss again, so could you please tell them what we did today?” The parent is less likely to call any other school staff member. If a parent overlooks all the time, effort, patience, and care a teacher has given and refuses to acknowledge what that teacher sees in class, that teacher is less likely to pick up the phone and call any parent or guardian.
And the experience need not be first hand. Parent or teacher experiences spreads through the school and community. Teachers find out which families are difficult and parents know which teachers will take it out on the kids. The walls go up around these people and no one wants to deal with them.
Then there is the fatalistic factor. How many calls to the teacher or parent will it take to effect change? If calling the teacher or principal isn’t going to change anything, why bother? If calling the parent is only going to get you beat up, what’s the point? Parents and teachers can easily rationalize themselves out of talking to each other.
Increasingly, parents and school personnel have more communication vehicles. We have email and online grade books, websites and blogs, newsletters and social networks – and we still have difficulty talking to each other.
I have excellent conversations with the vast majority of parents. Most of the time, when I have contacted teachers, the response has been professional and appropriate. We are really talking about that not-so-apocryphal twenty percent.
Do teachers need additional training in communicating with students’ homes? Do parents need help learning how to partner with schools? Could we do this together? Almost every school has an organization that is called, in some form or fashion, a Parent-Teacher organization. But they aren’t. My experience has been the PTO is a mostly moms club.
It is time to leap over the walls between school and home. It is time to create ways to bring parents, students, and educators together for more than a crisis phone call or intervention meeting.
Mr. Clark’s column is asking for parent cooperation. I am asking for collaboration. It is not enough to be nice. It is not enough to be professional. We need to be innovative, inclusive, and indefatigable! It is in our children’s best interest!
Recently, lauded teacher Ron Clark wrote a strongly worded column on CNN.com asking parents to work with, rather than against, teachers, administrators, and the educational system. He laments parents who make excuses for their children, treat teachers poorly, or refuse to hear anything but positive things about their children. He states that, “Today, new teachers remain in our profession an average of just 4.5 years, and many of them list ‘issues with parents’ as one of their reasons for throwing in the towel.”
My experience as a parent and a teacher supports Mr. Clark’s contentions. However, there is a surprising flipside: many parents are afraid of contacting teachers! As a parent, I have been shocked at some of the things that have happened in my children’s classrooms and stunned that no one has said a word! Likewise, I fully understand why some teachers would prefer to send an email or do nothing at all rather than directly speak to parents.
Once we have had a negative experience with a parent or teacher, we are less likely to reach out again. Once that teacher (or coach) has said to our child, “We don’t want your parents making a fuss again, so could you please tell them what we did today?” The parent is less likely to call any other school staff member. If a parent overlooks all the time, effort, patience, and care a teacher has given and refuses to acknowledge what that teacher sees in class, that teacher is less likely to pick up the phone and call any parent or guardian.
And the experience need not be first hand. Parent or teacher experiences spreads through the school and community. Teachers find out which families are difficult and parents know which teachers will take it out on the kids. The walls go up around these people and no one wants to deal with them.
Then there is the fatalistic factor. How many calls to the teacher or parent will it take to effect change? If calling the teacher or principal isn’t going to change anything, why bother? If calling the parent is only going to get you beat up, what’s the point? Parents and teachers can easily rationalize themselves out of talking to each other.
Increasingly, parents and school personnel have more communication vehicles. We have email and online grade books, websites and blogs, newsletters and social networks – and we still have difficulty talking to each other.
I have excellent conversations with the vast majority of parents. Most of the time, when I have contacted teachers, the response has been professional and appropriate. We are really talking about that not-so-apocryphal twenty percent.
Do teachers need additional training in communicating with students’ homes? Do parents need help learning how to partner with schools? Could we do this together? Almost every school has an organization that is called, in some form or fashion, a Parent-Teacher organization. But they aren’t. My experience has been the PTO is a mostly moms club.
It is time to leap over the walls between school and home. It is time to create ways to bring parents, students, and educators together for more than a crisis phone call or intervention meeting.
Mr. Clark’s column is asking for parent cooperation. I am asking for collaboration. It is not enough to be nice. It is not enough to be professional. We need to be innovative, inclusive, and indefatigable! It is in our children’s best interest!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)