In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 dead, Arizona educators said they regularly grapple with the benefits and the drawbacks of the immediacy of social media for students.
“We’re hearing firsthand through social media, spotlighting not only facts about the events, but the opinions and discussions our students are having and their reactions,” said Josh Meibos, Arizona Teacher of the Year for 2018. “Now we’re giving them a powerful tool to organize together and be a force to reckoned with.”
The rise of social media has also changed the way schools respond to their students, said David Schonfeld, director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement. Students often have more direct access to evolving news than teachers planning a response, he said.
“What you used to see were schools having more direct crisis plans, where administration would gather information and discuss together a traumatic event, release a statement and then gather the kids to tell them at one set time,” Schonfield said.
“Now with social media, teachers are often needing to get briefed because kids are being sent notifications all the time, in between classes, telling each other constant updates,” he said. “News and trauma demands your attention more than ever.”
And teachers may become the students when dealing with the digital natives in their classrooms.
“In Arizona, there’s about 924 students for every one counselor – a ratio so high that many kids are not having the proper resource to turn to,” Menard said.
Meibos agreed that there could be more counselors hired, but praised the effect current counselors have on their schools.
But he prefers to focus on “powerful” student-organized social media movements, which he believes have inspired Arizona teachers to listen more seriously to students and validate their concerns.
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