The Marketing Office is responsible for managing all formal external public relations communications. This includes producing publications and videos, managing the website and administering official social media accounts. Marketing will also manage the visual appearance of the school, monitoring what is posted on the walls, etc. Anything posted on bulletin boards should be visually appealing and appropriate. Student work and academic materials posted should meet with the approval of one’s division principal. Advertisements and propaganda that are not associated with the school are not to be posted unless approved by Marketing. All communication to the general school community or public should be approved/reviewed by Marketing before being produced, posted, or sent. This will help ensure consistent, accurate, and appropriate communication to preserve the image of ISNS.
MEDIA/MARKETING
To protect you and the integrity of International School of Nanshan Shenzhen (ISNS), faculty may not speak to the media, lawyers, etc. regarding ISNS matters without the consent of the Head of School and the Head of Marketing. All faculty and staff must abide by all applicable laws concerning copyright protection.
MAILINGS
All whole school notifications will be in posted on Managebac. If you would like to have a school- wide mailing/notification e-mailed to parents, it must be submitted to the Head of School and respective principal prior to being sent.
The procedure is as follows:
- Draft your e-letter for parents.
- Get approval from the appropriate Principal or Head of School.
- Ensure it is properly translated through the Academic Office. In particular cases, Marketing will translate documents.
- Following translation, Marketing will send the email via Manage Bac or give approval to do so.
- It is best to send out your own approved communication so that our parent community can contact the right people for questions.
Messages to parents should be posted in the Groups Notifications of Manage Bac. This is directly to the PA (Parent Association) and can be targeted to specific grade levels. Do not use IB Manager for messages to parents. IB Manager or Teams can be used for messages to student grade level groups.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
Internal communications regarding school business should take place through the school’s email system, using ISNS email addresses and Teams where appropriate. WeChat is not to be used for internal school communication, aside from those few accounts for our support staff (GA, etc.)
PARENT COMMUNICATION
Individual communication between teachers and parents concerning student achievement is vital for strengthening the home-school bond and promoting student success. All communications directly with parents or students discussing a student’s strengths, needs or school policies in an individual class can be done at the teacher’s professional discretion. If a correspondence addresses severe behavioral issues, learning difficulties or an issue of a negative nature, the teacher must communicate with his or her relevant division principal and inform them of the situation.
Faculty and staff are prohibited from distributing personal information of parents, students, and faculty to both ISNS community members and/or the public as it violates data protection laws and the AKD Data Protection Policy. When e-mailing more than one parent, use the “blind copy” (bcc) function.
If a parent requires personal information, please inform them that said information is confidential. If there is further inquiry, direct parents to the Admissions Department and/or division principal.
Staff-Parents & Teachers/Faculty Communication
If you are a staff-parent please ensure when speaking with faculty/staff regarding matters about your child, to follow guidelines for parents and use the appropriate channels of communication:
- Email staff/faculty using your personal email
- Request appointment
Please do not take advantage of being colleagues and speaking with faculty/staff without prior email request.
If you are staff/faculty, please ensure you contact the staff parent using their personal emails and follow the same protocol as you would with any other parent.
If you are a teacher or faculty member who is a parent, please be advised you can join the parent social media groups, although please remember you are also a representative of the school and you should follow stricter guidelines as such.
If it comes to your attention that slander, gossip and/or misinformation is circulating on social media platforms and/or email chains, please inform your division principal and do not get involved with said conversations
SOCIAL MEDIA CONDUCT – FACULTY AND STAFF
All ISNS Faculty and Staff are expected to adhere to the same Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) as students.
PRIVACY & PUBLISHING
ISNS Faculty and Staff should be mindful that any opinions or personal information they disclose about themselves, or colleagues may be linked to the ISNS name. This is true even if teachers restrict their pages to viewing only by friends. We recommend customizing your privacy settings on Facebook and other social media to restrict what you share and with whom.
Please note, prior to posting a photo, video and/or comment about a fellow colleague, please ask for permission. If a faculty member is made aware you have posted something about them, please respect their wishes if they would like you to remove it. Please keep in mind, all staff and faculty are brand ambassadors for the school and all content posted on social media reflects both yourself and the ISNS brand. If you have linked or disclosed your position as a faculty and staff member at ISNS, you must maintain the reputation of the school.
Revealing work-related information or problems with managers/colleagues on Facebook pages while networking with friends/colleagues can result in reputational damage and complaints. If this is brought to the attention of the school, it will be dealt with accordingly.
Posting ISNS proprietary or confidential material is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to:
- School official parent letters
- Admissions records: applications, parent, and student information
- Human Resources records: faculty personal information, letters of reference, etc.
- Financial records and forms
- School records
- Any pictures or videos with students included that were not part of an official post from the Marketing department
- Handbooks and policies
- Marketing materials; design templates, etc. (without permission from the Marketing team)
- Transcripts
If an issue is brought to our attention regarding an ISNS document and our confidential material being published, the school reserves the right to act accordingly.
ISNS discourages the taking and posting of photos or video of students by parents. Parents may not post pictures of students online or through social media who are not their own children.
USE OF MEDIA IN PUBLICATIONS
If a student is selected for external marketing features, the parent will be asked for explicit permission.
No student name will be associated with a photo of a student without permission of the parent. In social media, employees of the school should not tag/identify students.
If student work is requested to be published in external publications, parents will be asked for explicit permission prior to submission/publishing.
If a faculty/staff member is not comfortable with having their identity shared (photo and/or name), please notify Marketing by emailing the Marketing Team.
FRIENDING/FOLLOWINGIt is prohibited to add/friend any ISNS student to your personal Facebook/X or other Social Media account until their graduation from ISNS. If you create classroom or school accounts, they must be properly protected so that only the appropriate students, parents and faculty may access them.
It is acceptable to extend and accept friend requests from colleagues, parents, adult family members of students, and/or other adults you have met networking on behalf of the school. However, please remember you are opening your personal life up to the public and people within the school who will be paying close attention to your activity.
RESTRICTIONS
ISNS reserves the right to request the removal of comments and content from social media accounts if they:
- Are inaccurate, defame, or otherwise impact the school’s reputation and integrity.
- Contain confidential information, legal information, or inappropriate material.
- Violate the copyrights, trademarks, and/or intellectual property rights of ISNS or third parties.
- Compromise the privacy of faculty, staff, students, parents, or the school by disclosing personal information.
- Are slanderous, and/or unlawful.
As a faculty/staff member, it is prohibited to communicate with students via WeChat unless they have had the group approved by their division principal.
A request is to be sent via email to the corresponding division principal
- Email Subject line: WECHAT GROUP APPROVAL REQUEST— (name of faculty/staff and name of group).
The designated faculty/staff member of the group will have full responsibility for the conversations taking place and must have one other faculty member in the group.
Communication between Faculty/staff and parents via WeChat should be done carefully. Communication via methods such as messaging can be misconstrued and can lead to causing an issue or problem and/or exasperating the issue. In addition, maintaining important data can be lost compared to using the official communication channels. Taking great caution in communicating with parents via messaging platforms is vital to maintaining a healthy and respectful atmosphere.
All forms of communication to parents regarding their child and school-related concerns and business from a teacher should be done through school platforms. Please communicate with parents via one of our established internal communication channels: e-mail, Managebac, Seesaw, Teams, or a face-to-face meeting.
If you are a teacher or faculty member who is a parent, please be advised you can join the parent class WeChat, although please remember you are also a representative of the school and you should follow stricter guidelines as such. If it comes to your attention that slander, gossip and/or misinformation is circulating on this platform, please inform your division principal.
The Chinese government has tight restrictions and guidelines for the use of WeChat and other Chinese social media platforms. Please be aware that the administrator of a WeChat group will be held responsible for the content shared in that group by any individual member.
STAFF WECHAT GROUP
The ISNS WeChat group must be used for purposes which pertain to the whole group. The ISNS staff WeChat group should not be used for one-on-one conversation between two faculty members. This conversation should be shifted to a separate conversation.
ISNS reserves the right to take disciplinary action against a faculty member if it comes to the attention of the school that said faculty member is using the WeChat group to gossip, slander another faculty member/family/student, or divulge falsities.
If it comes to our attention that a faculty member is misusing the platform, they will be issued three warnings. On the fourth warning, ISNS reserves the right to take disciplinary action against the faculty member and the faculty member will be removed from the group.
SOCIAL MEDIA CONDUCT
ISNS has opened publicly facing pages on social media sites for viewing content and/or videos and posting comments. These social media sites include but are not limited to various sites such as Facebook, X (Twitter), WeChat, Redbook, Instagram, blogs, multimedia, or other user-generated content.
By accessing, viewing and/or posting any content to any ISNS social media site on the Internet, you accept, without limitation or qualification, the following terms of use. If you do not agree to the terms of this Policy, you may not view or post any content to any ISNS social media site on the Internet.
Terms of use:
- You are prohibited to post any photos of students who have declined to sign the media release form. All care should be taken to protect students’ identity so that they do not become targets of misconduct.
- If there is a complaint and request of removal from parents, students, faculty, or staff members regarding the use of images, the administrator must do so.
- All comments, posts, and/or videos, must not:
- Violate both local Chinese and International Laws;
- Transmit any material (by uploading, posting, email or otherwise) that is unlawful, disruptive, threatening, profane, abusive, harassing, embarrassing, tortuous, defamatory, obscene, libelous, or is an invasion of another’s privacy, is hateful or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable as solely determined at ISNS’s discretion;
- Impersonate any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
- Transmit any material (by uploading, posting, email or otherwise) that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships;
- Transmit any material (by uploading, posting, email or otherwise) that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary rights of any party.
Staff and faculty are prohibited from sharing photos, video footage, and/or identities of students at ISNS to their personal social media feeds. If a faculty or staff member has a public account, we highly encourage staff or faculty members to be mindful of the content posted to ensure the protection of the student/s. No student name is to be associated with a photo of a student without permission of the parent. In social media, employees of the school should not tag/identify students.
All faculty and staff when posting on social media platforms, are encouraged to include the hashtag #GoISNS /#南山国际 and tag the official ISNS account of that social media platform to ensure our school can monitor all posts going out.
For example (Twitter): ISNS is an amazing School #GoISNS @ISNS_School
If a faculty or staff member wishes to share news from the school, they are only allowed to share ISNS official posts from ISNS social media platforms.
ISNS reserves the right to monitor, prohibit, restrict, block, suspend, terminate, delete, or discontinue your access to any ISNS social media site, at any time, without notice.
Please be aware ISNS has no control over materials once they are posted online, and these can be copied or sent without our knowledge or permission.
ISNS FACULTY 