We had a meeting today where we discussed whether using Zoom with students sufficiently protects student's information and if we'd get in trouble for using it. This is a valid question since I'm not entirely conversant with every aspect of FERPA laws that protect identifying students information from being shared with anyone outside of school.
This law, by the way, is a good idea and I'm happy to have it but, seriously? You want to stop having online meetings with students because then those students might be seen by someone not usually in the school or because....Why? All the people who might see the students are ones who could come into the school and see students at lunchtime, or as a "room mom" (Yes, those still exist and they're still moms, 90% of the time.) We have to be extremely careful about not posting work that could identify the child -- including via their handwriting* -- and these are mostly reasonable rules to have. (It is permissible, however, to have students grade each other's papers and shout out their grades for the whole class to hear, because humiliating a child is perfectly fine so long as the paper hasn't been collected yet.**)
That's not really what this post is about, though.
It's about our strange and rather bizarre desire to "protect" children by keeping them from ever talking to each other electronically.
It's absolutely forbidden for students to use Zoom to contact each other. And talk. Privately. Because they might get hurt! OMG! Someone could be preying on them! Yes, I suppose it's true that an adult could try to surreptitiously Zoom with them on an illicit school account. Trafficking and grooming and all that are a real thing. But preventing kids from ever having electronic access to their friends is not going to protect them from it.***
But my kid, in a video chat with her best friends she hasn't seen in a month aren't in danger. And that's what we're talking, with all seriousness, about trying to eliminate. Keeping kids from having conversations without an adult around.
Really?
You think, in reality, kids never have an unsupervised moment? There's no lunch time, no recess, no chat about anything but school during the school day? Or what about at home? Some kids do actually go outside and play with the neighborhood kids without adult supervision. Kids NEED to talk. They NEED to play games and argue about the rules, and they just freaking need time to be kids away from adults.
Right now we're in a place that nobody living knows. We're physically isolated and most of us adults are finding a lot of solace in the video connections we are making with others. We shouldn't be trying to keep it from our kids, too, in the name of keeping them safe. Few people have a landline phone anymore that enables kids to just pick up the phone and call a friend. We decry giving a kid a cell phone till 8th grade or later (and with some good reason, there) but it leaves them without easy ways to make connections in a time like this.
They need to see each other. They need to talk.
Let them.
*I defy most parents to ID'd their own 6 year old's handwriting, let alone anyone else's 6 year old's.
**I'm not kidding. This is allowed via a SCOTUS decision. Lazy, humiliating, ostracizing teaching practices are perfectly fine. I never want to be a principal, but if I were, this practice would be utterly banned in my school.
***Things like conversations, teaching kids openly about sex, sexual predators, relationships, and having a healthy involvement in their digital consumption is way more useful.
