Page 12 - Professional Advisory: Professional Boundaries – An Advisory for Ontario Certified Teachers

Digital communication can be used to extend and enhance education, but care must be taken not to cross professional boundaries. For example, the immediacy and simplicity of a text message may
lead to longer, informal conversations that become personal and then intimate. Accordingly, OCTs are urged to keep their online interactions as professional as they would in a classroom.
“The relationship between secondary teachers and their students is particularly vulnerable in this age where social media is generally embraced, where the casual and the cool reign, where sex sells, and the social cohesion of communities is fractured.” 11
Boundaries like technology are not static or neatly defined. OCTs require supportive, and clear professional behavioural guidelines and explicit training in ethical decision making and other relevant skills such as mindfulness.
Ontario Certified Teachers are advised to:
• operate in all circumstances online as they would in a classroom and follow employer protocols and approved practices for the use of distance learning
• maintain a formal, courteous and professional tone in all communications with students
• decline student-initiated “friend” requests and refrain from sending “friend” requests to students or browsing their social media accounts
• avoid exchanging private texts, phone numbers, personal email addresses
or photos of an intimate nature with
students
• only use employer-authorized tech-
nology to communicate with students • only communicate with students
at appropriate times of the day and through established education platforms.
11 “Boundaries Blurred: The Modern Classroom”, A. Zenisek, Canadian School Counsellor, 8 March 2019
10 PROFESSIONAL ADVISORY: PROFESSIONAL BOUNDARIES