COMMUNICATIONS POLICY
The Marketing Office is responsible for managing all formal external 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 that are 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 to ensure consistent, accurate, and appropriate communication in order 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 mailings will be in an e-mail form. If you would like to have a school wide mailing/notification e-mailed to parents, it must be submitted to the Marketing Office for review.
The procedure is as follows:
- Draft your e-letter for parents.
- Get approval from the appropriate Principal or Head of School.
- Send the e-letter to Marketing with attention to the Head of Marketing (marketing@isnsz.com) for review. Please specify:
- Who the letter is for
- Deadlines
- All e-letters will be reviewed by Marketing and sent to the Academic Office for translation. In special cases, Marketing will translate documents.
- Following translation, Marketing will send the email via ManageBac.
All letters must be submitted to Marketing 72 hours prior to the distribution deadline.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
Internal communications regarding school business should take place through the school email system, using ISNS email addresses.
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 ISNS 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. Link to AUP
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. Nevertheless, as multitudes of people have learned all too well, virtually nothing is truly private on the Internet. It’s all too easy for someone to copy material out of restricted pages and redirect it elsewhere for wider viewing.
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 references, etc.
- Financial records and forms
- School records
- School photography
- 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 or confidential material being published, the School reserves the right to act accordingly.
At no time should parents be taking photos or video of students who are not their own children. 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 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 marketing@isnsz.com.
FRIENDING/FOLLOWING
It is prohibited to add/friend any ISNS student to your personal Facebook/Twitter 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 persons 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 or department head. A request is to be sent via email to the corresponding division principal or department head and copying marketing@isnsz.com.
- 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 over 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, the ability to maintain important data can be lost compared to using the official channels of communication. 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 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, OneNote and/or a face-to-face meetings.
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. A copy of the governmental guidelines can be obtained by following this link. 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, Twitter, 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 student at ISNS to their personal social media feeds. However, ISNS encourages staff and faculty to have professional social media accounts which are separate from their personal accounts, to which they regularly monitor and are selective with friends and followers. Staff and faculty must regularly check their privacy settings to ensure security is up-to-date.
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, must include the hashtag #GoISNS 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
When posting photos, faculty and staff should represent each child fairly ensuring no child is favored over others.
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.
We will honor all requests by users who wish to have images of themselves removed from the website or social media sites. To make such a request, please contact marketing@isnsz.com.
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 