Parent Makes Formal Complaint To School After First-Year Teacher Declined His Facebook Friend Request
The whole situation made the teacher incredibly uncomfortable.
Nicoleta Ionescu | Shutterstock Most teachers can probably recount an awkward run-in they’ve had with a parent. However, one teacher found herself in the middle of a situation she felt downright uncomfortable in.
The line between professional and personal life can sometimes get blurred with teachers and that includes social media. When a first-year educator declined a friend request from a student's dad he didn't take the rejection like a mature adult and instead tried to get her in trouble with administration.
A parent sent a first-year teacher a friend request on Facebook.
A new teacher shared the strange interaction she had with the father of one of her students in a since-deleted Reddit post.
“I’m going into my first year in a small town about an hour away from the city I’m from,” she said. “School hasn’t started yet, and a parent has already contacted admin about me.”
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The teacher explained that she was introduced by the school district on Facebook.
“My district posted a little blurb with a ‘new staff introduction’ on their Facebook page,” she said. “This included my name, a brief description of my education, hobbies, words of advice for students, and a photo. I wasn’t tagged in the post.”
Even though her personal account was not tagged or mentioned in any way in the post, one dad still found her on the social networking website.
“This parent then went out of his way to search for my personal Facebook and add me as a friend,” she said. “While my Facebook is fully appropriate and non-controversial, this feels like a step over the line.”
Due to some wrong clicks, the teacher got herself into an even more unfortunate situation.
“I have my account private, and when I saw the request, I fully intended to leave the request pending and pretend I never saw it if he mentioned it,” she continued. “But I accidentally hit decline.”
The parent was not happy to find out that the teacher declined his friend request.
“This parent proceeded to then email admin and tell them I must be hiding something, and that I should be ‘accessible’ to parents,” she continued.
“Open house is next week where I plan to give parents my number (a Google voice number of course), my email and tell them to contact me if they ever have concerns,” she said. “So I will certainly be accessible.”
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The teacher has received support for her decision and expects to continue to do so.
“Thankfully, my admin is not crazy (at least that I know of), so I expect to be backed up. Other teachers, including my union rep, have told me I have nothing to worry about,” she stated.
Other people were concerned to find out the parent somehow knew the teacher had declined his friend request.
A fellow Reddit user commented on the post and said they weren’t aware that Facebook users were notified when a friend request was declined.
The teacher replied, “I Googled this and I couldn’t find anything that says it does, which means he must’ve gone back to check my account again, where it would’ve shown ‘add friend’ again instead of ‘request pending.’”
“It’s one of the many reasons why I know I did the right thing,” she continued. “Even still, I’m trying to figure out how to make it through the year and take the path of least resistance because this definitely creeped me out.”
There is no one answer to the question of whether teachers should accept friend requests from students.
Writing for We Are Teachers, Julie Mason pointed out that there are pros and cons to accepting a friend request from parents of students. It could help teachers better communicate and connect with parents, but it could also obliterate existing boundaries.
Mason also noted, “Many districts have a policy that prevents teachers from accepting Facebook friend requests from students and their parents.”
So, in some cases, the decision has already been made. In those where it hasn’t, a teacher has to use their discretion and best judgment to decide what the right thing to do is.
Either way, teachers are entitled to their privacy and that includes privacy on social media.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.