Edict #6: Let My People Skype!
By Kendall Haney
Jr. Infectious Disease Correspondent
Dear iGlobe Editor,
Hi, Kimia. I’m looking to start a conversation with another student, and I actually wanted back a black and white equally friendly real life response. Who better to start this conversation with than the iGlobe Editor who has done all she can to give me every opportunity to be a part of a newspaper I genuinely love? And…anyway, I have to finish a Letter to the Editor for my composition class or risk failure as a daughter, a potential citizen of the world…and as a seventh grader in general. Since this is a double win for me and I hope at least a quasi-interesting letter for you to read as an Editor, I say let’s get the ball rolling.
I’ve never mentioned this to you since even iGlobe students can’t really share much about themselves with one another, but as much as I love K12 IA and I think we are the best school on the planet, I really don’t like that we can’t talk to one another. For example, because we aren’t allowed to talk to one another outside of a vague comment here or there in a class connect in front of a vigilant moderator, I never got a chance to tell you that I was really happy to meet you at the beginning of the school year. I never got to say that I appreciated the feedback you gave me—whether you agreed with me or not—on my articles. I never got to say that your Arabic response to something I had written was a real connection for me as I sat in Saudi Arabia, sad. And yes, that one day you wrote back in response to something I’d written, I was really sad. Saudi Arabia is a hard place for this All-American girl to live, and at that time, just your brief comments made me feel both connected back home while making me appreciate where I was.
But you didn’t know that you did that for me because we aren’t allowed to talk at K12 privately between students.
In short, on more than one occasion, those however brief emails from you that were entirely perfunctory but decorated with just a little bit of your humanity and understanding made me smile, and touched my heart when I needed someone.
Here are some other things I never got to tell you. I never got to tell you that I love chocolate chip cookies. Maybe I should have put it in the iGlobe—pass my favorite recipe along like a secret code. I never got to ask you if you know anything about chemistry—because it’s halfway through the semester and I don’t know anything about it that ensures my grade could get above a C. I need help with that class, and if I could have actually asked you about it maybe you could have told me where I could get help with it without having to bother my teacher every five seconds. Maybe you could have even helped me with it.
I guess, in the end, I’m trying to say I never got a chance to say that I genuinely wanted to be your friend. But that couldn’t happen. Ever. Because K12 students aren’t allowed to talk to one another in any real tangible way.
As a student myself, I think this is an important thing to talk about out loud publicly with other students. In my opinion, I think many students feel like islands in their own school, and I certainly feel like sometimes I’m just talking to avatars in a class connect classroom. They are just faceless names that help make up my Matrix-like school-world. And I don’t say this to insult other students, I mean it in the sense that I just can’t talk to any of them…the students are just sort of…there to be clapped for when they do something noteworthy, but otherwise not contacted in any way for fear of…what, exactly? I’m more emotionally invested in my favorite video game characters than anyone at school, save for a few teachers who really are that amazing.
Here’s my point. When this happens, when students aren’t connecting at all with other kids and their unique ideas at a school, I’d say there is a problem. But I didn’t write this to rant, I wrote this to present my argument on why we need better student communication.
I’m well aware that there are always dangers when it comes to talking to people, especially people on the internet. The school has good reason to be worried about students exchanging personal information with others, and then using that freedom irresponsibly. There is bullying, cyberstalking, and the occasional unwarranted snark for no good reason. However, in this case, is the cure really all that much better than the disease? I feel like I’m being punished into isolation, and I didn’t even get to do anything bad yet.
With any freedom there’s always a risk, and I get it that our school doesn’t want to be responsible for problems that might stir up between students. But in my opinion, our parents should be just as responsible for our social lives as they are for our academic ones. If they are qualified enough to be academic coaches, I feel like they are more than qualified enough to guide virtual social life experiences. Besides that, they are our parents. When we mess up, no matter what happens, it’s ultimately on them.
Momma, you’re welcome.
There are so many good things that can come out of a simple conversation. Ideas, feelings, and opinions can be shared that result in new ideas and bigger, hopefully more complicated, observations. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but ‘they’ always say two heads are better than one.
Imagine what could happen at our school—what kind of K12 x-potential could be released—if it weren’t just the teachers trying to come up with all of the ideas. I’ve seen it personally when some students put their heads together without a moderator being overly heavy-handed. It’s like a room came alive filled with real life magic. Sadly, I’ve noticed many students in my class connects don’t even bother to talk now because they’ve been shut down so many times. I’ve been at this school since 2nd grade, and I’ve noticed a definite downtick in participation. If we opened the door to communication, give students a forum outside of school to talk and give them a welcoming group to join, maybe they would be more inclined to share their ideas.
There are many different social media websites that can be used for these sorts of things, and most can be supervised by a teacher, if the school wishes it. However, I’d like to ask how much hand holding teachers are going to be responsible for after we leave the hollow virtuality of our class-not-really-connectedness? Don’t we need to learn how to behave before we graduate high school? Can’t a school help conduct that learning through letting us make the occasional error with repercussions?
Skype seems to be available to most, if not all, students and teachers. Not to mention that a Skype group can be moderated by a teacher if we must have that supervision. But honestly, why should we have to rely on the teachers to keep the students online environment safe and happy? Again, for me, that should be the parents’ job to keep their children in check. With that in mind, I’d like to unveil the following plan for you to consider:
a). Any student communication plan in a virtual environment must acknowledge that the school feels a certain liability for child safety. Therefore, from the very beginning, my plan recognizes the seriousness of cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and the dark consequences of sharing inappropriate personal information online. Each semester students must attend at least one school assembly on how to conduct themselves appropriately online.
b). In order to manage the possibility of kids getting into trouble, a school communication policy must be put in place first that outlines manners, appropriate dialogue between peers, and what kind of information should not be shared. It should be made clear that any reported violations of this code of behavior will have consequences ranging from parental conferences with administration to expulsion if the behavior continues.
c). Students are not to share their personal information during class times.
d). Rather, an active/updated family directory of students should be maintained and exclusively available on the parents’ OLS main page. This family directory should have a special password for entry separate from the parent password for other things like administering tests. Should a child want to contact another child from his or her class, s/he must ask her/his parents to look up contact information from the student directory on behalf of their child.
e). Parents should be in the driver’s seat of responsibility should they opt for their child to be included in the student directory. By including their child’s name in the student directory parents are saying that they are willing to accept the risks and responsibilities for what their children do online. Just like in any other school, a school can teach a subject or behavior, but it can’t enforce it. That is the job of the family.
f). If a student feels like her/his safety is being threatened or they feel bullied/cyberstalked online by inappropriate speech, s/he should immediately take a screen shot of the offensive conversation and show it to her/his parents. Parents then have an obligation to report any kind of bad behavior to school administration officials. As appropriate, the parents can make the choices to block people from contacting their child further.
I feel like if my a-f step plan were put into place immediately, both students and our school environment would benefit immediately. There would be study partners. There would be more sharing of ideas. I wouldn't have a C in science. And yes, ideas can act like a spark of inspiration in uncertain directions…but the lack of a spark…wow…now there is something for our school to really fear. After all, it’s what we learn to do in school that’s going to last a lifetime.
Sincerely,
Kendall Haney
Jr. Infectious Disease Correspondent
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