Teacher Hanging Out with Students outside of school?
i work in a private Christian school and our rules often differ from public schools, but if you also work in a private school, what are your policies or thoughts on teachers hanging out with students outside of school?
Example: A male teacher in his early 30s is going bowling today with two 17-year-old students to celebrate his birthday. As an admin I think this is unwise and our policy discourages it, but does not outright prevent it. His take is he has been discipling students and this falls under that. It is also happening in a public place so he is not worried about issues. I think it opens him up to potential issues and also breeds favoritism.
If it matters, this individual is also going to be an assistant principal at my school starting in September.
Editing to add some wording from our Employee Handbook: [School] strongly recommends that staff do not have outside contact with children from the school. However, if off-site contacts are unavoidable (such as during mentoring programs, church, etc.) [School] has determined the following forms of outside contact are appropriate and inappropriate.
Appropriate: Taking groups of children on an outing, attending sporting activities with groups of children, attending function at a child’s home with parents/guardians present.
Inappropriate: Basically a list of things involving one child.
I do think my board and I need to revisit this as we work on updating the handbook. I cleaned it up last summer, but I am still fairly new in my role and am slowly updating and changing things that had long been ignored by my predecessors.