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Has this tool been recommended by colleagues or student I respect, or is someone else willing to try this tool with me?

In other words, model what you want your students to do: Use technology as a tool for learning.

It takes insight and guts to catch oneself at what amounts to an exercise in pseudodemocracy.

A simple and popular workaround for awkward or potentially unprofessional interactions is to use Facebook pages, groups or separate accounts in the classroom. Pages are essentially separate profiles that students can Like in order to receive updates, and you can add students to groups in order to stay connected. Creating a separate profile for yourself is an easy way to prevent students from seeing any personal information that you would normally have on Facebook.

When you set a social media policy for your classroom, it’s important to delineate clear guidelines with your students on how they should and should not interact with you.

“During the term, I perceive that friending a student creates uncomfortable boundaries for the student-professor relationship,” she says. “After all, students post information about their personal lives and vice versa.”

When all is said and done, kindergarteners will have spent up to 60 days of class time—or a third of the school year—taking various standardized tests. And you wonder why so many wealthy people send their children to private schools.

to hold teachers accountable for how much their students learn—or at least how well they score on standardized tests, which is not always the same thing. But the idea is that high-scoring "good" teachers will keep their jobs and low-scoring "bad" teachers will be fired, presumably to be replaced by the thousands of "good" teachers eager to come to Illinois to give more tests.

"Most of the kids just look at me," says another kindergarten teacher who asked not to be identified. "They're five. They don't what a 'main character' means."