Our school uses Conscious Discipline (CD) as a framework for managing the relationships we have with one another at school, and, through parent workshops and other means, we encourage our families to use the same language and approach with their children at home for the consistency that leads to the behaviors we want to see. As this can be challenging, there are a couple aspects of CD that are worth repeatedly emphasizing. One is that CD begins the process of behavior change in children by starting first with adults. It asks us as adults to become more composed, to focus on what we are doing and saying that might be contributing to an issue with a child. By moving out of an “emotional state” first yourself, you’re better able to model and guide a child to the appropriate behavior. Second, CD highlights the fact that in every conflict or disagreement there’s an opportunity to be “helpful” or “hurtful”—an effective resolution is usually dependent upon people choosing the former rather than the latter.
I’m reminded of these two points when I see and hear about the negative role social media can sometimes play among the adults in our community. In particular on Facebook, there have been times over the past few years when a parent has posted a comment or rhetorical question that is a direct or thinly veiled complaint or criticism about a teacher, student, or class that eventually finds its way—virtually or through word of mouth—to that teacher, to the parent of that student, or to others close to the situation in some way. And I have to wonder, are those posts helpful or hurtful? In many cases, I know they are hurtful, both in the sense that the words in the post have hurt the feelings of someone mentioned in it (especially when the poster never even approached them about the issue first) and that they made resolving whatever issue was raised that much harder by making it public.
Of course, in any community, disagreement and conflict will come up at times, and this certainly isn’t a message meant to curtail feedback and critique a parent might have for a teacher or for the school. But, as with CD, we need to model the same sort of actions we’d hope to see from our own students and kids. So I’d ask of you to not make references at all in Facebook posts to issues you have with a class or teacher. If I have a disagreement with someone in our school community, I don’t post about it on Facebook and I wouldn’t want any of our teachers doing so either because, chances are it will be less helpful than hurtful. But I’m also not here to be the social media police, so if you post about happenings at ANCS, please ask yourself these questions before you do so:
- Is what I’m about to post true? If you’ve only heard one side of a situation or don’t have all the facts, seek them out with someone at the school. Don’t use Facebook as the means to gather information on a possibly sensitive issue.
- Have I already sought to address this issue or ask this question of a teacher or someone at the school? If not, then please do so—first.
- Is what I’m about to post going to be helpful or hurtful? Whether it mentions any names or not, if what you post doesn’t seem likely to help the situation, then please don’t post it.
- Would I pass out flyers with my post at morning and afternoon carpool? What might seem like a post on your own page or to a closed group that will only be seen by a few close friends is likely—in a small, close-knit community such as ours—to be known quickly by a much wider audience within the school community. So it’s not a stretch to think of a post being distributed in these terms.
Thankfully, most of what transpires on social media about our school is positive, helpful, and/or innocuous. My hope is that by shining a light on the ways that it can cause problems for our school family we can be more mindful of the role we all can play in using social media responsibly in the same ways we would like to see from our students and children.