Parents: I want to share with you that there will be some facebook or social media education at one of these next two meetings since we have an incident-not caused by one of our students-to deal with. The issue at hand has come through a Marshalltown student who jokingly posted a drawing involving a Marshalltown coach and two of our students. It clearly was meant to be funny and yet, clearly out of line. As soon as the drawing was discovered last night, I spoke with the Marshalltown head coach and the posting went away immediately. She was aware of the incident from her policy coach. They had already instructed the girl to remove the posting.
Every year we get something to deal with over kids being stupid on facebook. That is pretty much normal in our world. We do the best we can with educating our kids about what is proper and not proper in the social media world. We want kids to have fun and be kids but some postings are just not acceptable.
As parents, I would encourage you to take a few moments and visit with your students about conduct in the social media world. I would also encourage the conversation from that standpoint that if a student feels they are being bullied or stalked in the social media world that they know
they can turn to their parents and coaches for help. Misconduct in the social media world is an offense under the DMPS Student Code of Conduct. So there are ramifications if our students are badly out of line.
As a coach, I joined the facebook student world this past summer after witnessing the connections built by other coaches in the debate world with their students. Mrs. Danielson is aware of and is supportive of my use of facebook and interactions with our students. It has been a wonderful tool.
Again, I want to be clear that no Roosevelt debate student has done anything that we are currently aware of that would be inappropriate. This issue at hand came from a Marshalltown student. Clearly her intentions were not meant to be harmful but rather funny. The Marshalltown coaching staff is providing her with some social media guidelines and expectations for the future.
