Facebook and Students: Why Can’t We Be Friends?

by Dr Davis on December 24, 2008

Or can we be friends?

Core Knowledge Blog has a post on the issue of students and facebooking. I was thinking earlier today about that very question.

I give students my home number, but not my cell. I have office hours. I have met students at restaurants to study and talk.

fb-theaterBut I have not friended them on facebook. And I don’t intend to.

One issue that students sometimes have with teachers is that they know too much of their private life. If they’re my friends on fb, they will know too much about my private life.

Also, some students don’t understand that being my “friend” doesn’t mean the grades improve.

So I don’t facebook my students.

I have, in the past, been friendly with students. I was actually friends for years with a student who had been in my composition class. I used to have all my classes over to my house for dinner together. It was fun, but some of the students didn’t get that I was still the teacher. So I don’t do that anymore. And I think that I am carrying the wisdom from that experience over to facebook.

I would love to facebook past students. I’d like to keep up with their lives and encourage them.

But I won’t friend my present students because the line between appropriate and inappropriate is just too blurry. I’d rather keep the gap bigger, just in case someone disagrees on where that line actually is.

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Adjunct life

by Dr Davis on December 24, 2008

 studying_bookscomputerI am an adjunct.  I have wanted to be an adjunct for years, but now I want to find a full-time job.  That is neither here nor there for this post, though.  It’s just a contextual statement.

I got an email yesterday that one of my classes didn’t make.  I actually expected that, but I don’t like it when it happens.  It was a bad class to not make because it is one in which I make 2x the salary as at my other schools.  However, it wasn’t a terrible class to lose because it isn’t through the school from which I purchase my insurance, thus my insurance is still okay.

It’s a pain to lose a good class, though.  I have three preps next semester.  Two of them are brand new classes at SLAC.  And they are preps for one class each.  The other class would have given me two classes for a single prep, which I would prefer, obviously.

I am still teaching five courses in the spring because I thought one of the courses wouldn’t make (the time slot was bad), so I contracted with CC2 to teach a night course.  I didn’t want to drive over there multiple times a week, so I am just going once.  

CC2 is not in the safest neighborhood, but my students live there and I’ve never had anything bad happen to me.   In the spring a woman was killed in a carjacking gone bad across the street while I was meeting my night class, but I didn’t know about it till the next day.  I’m just as glad about that.

adjunct-bagNot everyone is in the position I am in.  I can teach more classes than I want to.  Some adjuncts can’t get enough work, so I am grateful for that.

So I am trying to make a living, get my foot in the door, carry a full work load, get conference presentations and publications, and live down the fact that I am an adjunct.  I am doing all but the last.  I’m not too sure how to do the last, but when I figure it out, I will let you know.

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