Social Media Policy
Social media is always evolving, and has changed the way in which businesses
communicate with their staff and customers. As small business owners or freelancers, Dance Teachers need to know the benefits and risks of using these channels of communication in order to better market themselves. They also need to be able to mitigate any risks in a legal sense and in terms of the safeguarding of students and themselves, and their teaching colleagues.
It is a strict policy of Move Dance Melbourne that no teacher or guest of the school should freely give out any personal information such as your phone number or address to children or their parents who you come in contact with via a social media channel, without the prior knowledge or permission of the Principal.
We encourage all of our teachers to:
• Limit your privacy settings for any personal social networking site you subscribe to (don’t have ‘open’ and easily accessible accounts).
• Ensure that you are not socialising with any children, young people or parents of the studio, as with whom you have a professional responsibility and duty of care (this also includes online gaming, even if this is a personal activity). To knowingly play online games with children,vulnerable adults or parents of the studio is a breach of professionalism.
• Ask your family and friends not to post tagged images of you on their open access
profiles on Facebook; if this happens, you are advised to de-tag yourself, so as not to expose yourself to unnecessary risk.
• Get full written permission from a parent or guardian AND Principal of the studio before posting images or videos of students on social media. Only devices owned by the studio may be used to take static or moving images of children or vulnerable adults once permission has been granted.
• Ensure that all visual media published does not ‘identify’ a child or vulnerable adult (i.e. avoid posting images of children with name badges displaying full names or address of your school, which may make children more vulnerable to ‘grooming’).
• Not use text, chat or private messaging to send personal messages to children, young people, vulnerable adults or their parents.
• Refrain from encouraging children to join social media platforms if they are younger than the legal age to do so. Social Media Laws states that the minimum age to join is 16 years old.
• Discourage the addition or allowance of a child, young person, vulnerable adult or
parent of the studio to join your contacts/friends on personal social networks.
• Write inappropriate or indiscreet posts about any child, vulnerable adult or parent of the studio, or about a professional teacher that you work with or come into contact through Move Dance Melbourne.
• Send anyone (especially children or their parents) material that could be considered threatening, bullying, offensive, illegal, or of a sexual nature.