Private information.

When you're the teacher, students always want your information (phone, e-mail, etc...). They want to be able to call you when they need/want to. To them, it's just a phone call or two, but they don't understand that I teach between 80 to 180 students each year. If each called me only twice, I'd have a call every day of the year. Although they always ask for my phone number, I always tell them to e-mail me. I also make a little joking comment about how many e-mails they can send me. "...about two, three if you're nice, four if you're sending me money."

I only give my phone number to students who are paying me for some service outside the classroom (consulting, private classes, etc..). But once in while, very rarely, I'll get a call from a student and have no idea how he/she got my number.

A student called me at home the other day to ask a question about class. "How'd he get my number?" was my first question. I thought maybe someone in the office unknowingly gave it to him. But then I remembered that this student had been in one of my other classes a while back, about a year ago. He had asked me about consulting on buying/setting-up a new computer, but never called me. Seems he kept it, and "filed" it.

Once, a long time ago, while doing an in-class example of something, I used my home address on the board. I did it without thinking. That weekend, as I was leaving my home, I saw one of my students sort of hanging around outside my building. I called her name, and she said "Oh, hi. You live here? I'm uh.. waiting for a friend who lives here." I asked which apartment she lived in (it was a small building and I knew a few tenants). She said "No, not in this building. Um.. she lives in that big one over there." (pointing to one down the block) Then she quickly changed the subject, and asked me a few computer questions and told me that she was going to buy a computer that day. She pulled out some ads and asked me what was the difference between a few circled specials, then left without waiting for her friend.

Later on I figured out what happened. She knew what building I lived in, but not what apartment. So she waited outside to "bump into" me and ask her questions. I asked about her friend (who lived "down the block"), and at first she had no idea what I was talking about. When she realized I caught her, she gave me a quick "Oh! Yeah! He's fine. He was sick. So I waited for nothing." Her friend must have been REAL sick, because the weekend I "bumped into" the student, her "friend" (the "he") was a "she". Hope I don't catch that.

Never, ever, ever, give a student your address or home number. He/she will call you or "bump into" you on your street.