My comment was about a comment that teachers had to have a separate social life from their students. In the tiny rural towns that will just never be.
On any given Friday night we have a bunch of teens in our home, all friends of our son. We help them with prepping for College admission tests, filling our scholarship applications, going through the fastfa applications, or what ever else the need is.
Our rules are that where the kids are their parents are always welcome and we won't lie to the cops or their parents about anything we know about them. Some parents show up and some other parents never show up or even call. Many times their kids are here because their parents will not help them.
This is a town of less than 2K people. All the locals went to school together when they were younger and the families are intermarried for several generations. Trying to separate social situations from all the kids at school would be rude to the kids and their parents.
By the way, I don't even have a facebook account.
We are not talking about the same thing.
You are talking about social interaction and I am talking about social life.
The best way I can describe the difference is to reference my experience as an officer in the military. Social interaction was fine between officers and enlisted. You could talk baseball, have a beer at a picnic together, and talk about your kids sports. That is social interaction. What you did not do was talk sex lives, get drunk together, or talk about your issues with the commanding officer.
Saying hello at the grocery store, asking about their prize calf, or even being a parental host does not really allow a student into your private life (truly private life).
I presume you would never discuss issues with your students that would compromise their respect for you. The problem with Facebook is that it is an open forum, and a side comment from your brother about how drunk you were 30 years ago is seen by all of your Facebook friends. Indeed, any friend can post anything to your page, so although you can try to rectify inappropriate posts, you cannot really stop them.
I have a few teacher friends and I have seen some very innappropriate comments from students on their pages that made me cringe. If it were me, I wouldn’t friend students on Facebook, even if it were allowed.