Who Chooses the Communication Tool?

   by Florian SEROUSSI

Over this past school year my wife and I have slowly been watching a change in the way her Middle School students communicate with her. It has me thinking that we no longer get to decide the communication tool for a conversation. 

It started back in September when my wife received an e-mail from Facebook via a student. My wife is not friends with any students on Facebook but that didn't and hasn't stopped them from sending her messages about school. The first time it happened we laughed and my wife was a bit freaked out. But over the course of the year it's been happenings more and more. Kids, who are always on Facebook, and using it like e-mail decided it was OK to contact their school counselor that way...and is it?

A counselors role is to be available to their students in time of need and crisis. Do we really care how they contact their counselor? What program or method they use? I sure don't and even though at first it freaked my wife out she's coming to terms with the fact that this is e-mail for the kids, this is how they have decided to communicate and we no longer control the communication tools.

Then a couple weeks ago...on a Sunday....she gets a text message from a students (our school directory lists cell phone numbers of admin and counselors). Now, forgetting your homework for the weekend and texting your counselor about it on Sunday night really does not qualify as a crisis, but the fact remains that this student decided that was the communication tool they were going to use. Are we going to see more of this as well? Time will tell.

All of this has me thinking about schools and what are the communication tools we set up and are they the right tools? Do our schools need a Facebook profile so that students and increasingly parents can contact the school in that way?

I keep thinking about all the places I carry on conversations. Some initiated by me, in which I choose the tool, but most by others. Some conversations are in Twitter, some on Facebook, others in text messages, and yet others in e-mails. Sometimes a conversation crosses platforms other times it stays in the original form factor. 

So the question becomes should every counselor be required to have a Facebook page?

How about Teachers?

Who decides?