Students will have to lock up their cellphones when they return to school in Marshall County in a few weeks. WREG reported:
Yondr pouches will be provided to students in grades five through 12. Kindergarten through fourth graders aren’t permitted to have cell phones in MCSD schools at all... As students enter the school building each school day, teachers will be waiting with the Yondr locking devices, MCSD superintendent Carrie Skelton told the Daily Journal. Students will place their phones in their pouches, and teachers will lock the phones inside. Students will keep the pouches, and therefore their phones, in their possession throughout the day. When they leave at the end of the school day, teachers will unlock the pouches for them. Each pouch costs $30, and students’ parents will be required to pay for replacement pouches should their children's Yondr pouches be damaged or lost. Students who need access to their phones out of medical necessity will use pouches that simply Velcro shut.... Article
It's about damn time some sanity was restored to the classroom even if it is way up in Marshall County. The new State Superintendent of Education should try to make such a cellphone ban statewide policy.
Why is Marshall County using pouches instead of just banning them from the classroom? A Wall Street Journal story published a few months ago provides some insight into the school district's decision.
The newspaper reported a few months ago a star teacher quit because he simply got tired of dealing with cellphones in the classroom:
Mitchell Rutherford has taught biology at a public high school for 11 years. He’s quitting after this semester because he’s tired of trying to engage students who are lost in their phones. Schools are losing teachers for a variety of reasons, and phones factor into decisions to leave. Dozens of teachers have told me they spend more time policing kids’ phone use than they do teaching. For Rutherford—a 35-year-old teacher who once embraced technology—seeing kids checked out and, in his view, addicted, robbed him of the joy of teaching.... A millennial and digital native, Rutherford used to think technology had a place in the classroom and that students could be taught to manage their phone use. This year showed him the grim truth......
Mr. Rutherford's school banned cellphones in the classroom but left enforcement up to teachers. Unfortunately, that means teachers trying to teach must instead spend much of their time policing cellphone use in class:
Rutherford says he was careful not to blame his students for their phone dependency. He explained to them that the apps were designed to be addictive and taught units on the neurobiology of addiction. “I would walk up to kids and say, ‘Give me your phone,’ and they would clutch it, and I would say that’s what an alcoholic would do if you tried to take away their bottle,” he says. He voiced his frustration to teachers and administrators every chance he got. Other teachers agreed something needed to be done about phones, and some shared methods they’d tried. One teacher deducts participation points for students who use their phones in class. Another tells students to leave their phones in their backpacks, which are to be placed at the front of the classroom. The methods work so long as teachers are on top of it. “If at any point you stop policing it, it backslides immediately,” Rutherford says.
In desperation, the teacher tried something different:
In Rutherford’s last month at Sahuaro High, he has challenged his students to a digital detox. They’re supposed to cut their phone use and replace that time with a non-screen hobby. The assignment, including a written report reflecting on the experience, counts as a lab grade. The initial results have surprised him. “Some of my kids who care the least about grades are coming up and showing me how much they’ve reduced their screen time,” he says. Before the detox Isabel Richey, a senior in Rutherford’s AP biology class, was spending six hours a day on her phone, most of it watching TikTok. “I would go on my phone at the beginning of every class and never get off,” she says. She’s now down to about an hour a day, and has read nine novels since starting the detox. She’s also been doing homework in long chunks, without breaking to watch TikTok every 10 minutes. She says she’s in a better mood and feels less stress.... Rest of article
Students are actually happier and more engaged when their faces aren't buried in screens? What a surprise.
The Yondr pouches allow the teachers to an actually spend their time teaching instead of policing students who are addicted to the screens. The parents might be mad but they will just have to get over it.
15 comments:
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There's no reason for a child under 18 and living at home to have a phone in the first place. And very little reason for an adult to have a cell phone. People are just addicted to yakking and social crapola. Go do something real.
I sub sometimes in a local school system. I tell the students it is OK to sit on your phone all class as long as you do not disturb others. Just let me know you are on your phone and I will not call on you. I make a note.
I also tell them I will give them a good letter of rec to Burger King or Wendy's when they graduate. If they are lucky, they will be certified on a forklift.
Either way, they will be working every Saturday while their friends attend SEC football games.
It's their choice.
Great, this should have been done a long time ago. Another place cell-phones seriously need to be banned is with health care workers while on duty. I worked in a hospital for 30 years, as cell phone became more and more an acceptable thing, I’ve seen nurses, lab techs, respiratory specialists therapists etc using cellphones while doing patient care. It is unbelievable that hospital administrators allow this. You deserve, for safeties sake, for your health care workers to be 100 percent focused on the job they are doing. We should accept nothing less.
I don’t remember long lines at pay phones before the advent of cellular devices.
Just what we need more of. The government telling people what to do with their cell phones.
Weak administrators and teachers trying to teach with no support from the weak/sorry Administration!
Provide a phone in the principals office for the students in an emergency.
Now this shit ain’t rocket science!
Stop negotiating with the students!!!
Uhn-uhn. Nah. Nope. Just more money squandered by the education professionals. There’s no putting the cell phone genie back in the bottle.
6:59 Pretty sure the school board is made up of those elected by the children's parents, who overwhelmingly seem to support this.
Guess you think kids could wear speedo's and vape in class if they also wanted to, huh?
As a former teacher (junior high and high school), I can tell you exactly what's going to happen. Many students will bring a broken or unactivated phone to lock away while keeping their active phone and using it anyway. The pouches are a good idea in theory, but I doubt their effectiveness with students addicted to their phones.
Imagine if you will, a senior-level class in one of the state's largest high schools. The students in the class are among the brightest in the school. The teacher invites a guest to speak on the class's subject. The guest has spoken to hundreds of students during his career (usually to AP students). The teacher greets the speaker and brags about the high level of intellect of the students. The speaker begins...
The students were drinking sodas, eating chips, and absorbed with their cell phones though there was no apparent reason for needing a cell phone or a laptop.
The guest speaker asks some easy questions to gauge interest and attention. No responses. On the third try, the speaker paused and allowed the silence to cause unease. The teacher looked up from his laptop and scolded the students for not answering. One mumbled an incorrect answer. The teacher resumed his laptop obsession.
The speaker resumed and when the next question went unanswered, the speaker commented, "well, it appears you have no need for the information I was asked to teach. Best wishes."
I closed my folder and left the room. I will not speak again in a public school without assurance cell phones are verboten.
RMQ
Unless cell phones/smartphones are needed in support of the curriculum (like ipads are in some districts), they have no business in the classroom period. They are either there for education or not.
Guess who the students are texting, mostly? MOMMY. I've worked with too many mothers who are on the phones every half hour with the children - including grown children.
Just have a policy where if one is on the phone during class, the phone is taken away for 30 days. The school resource officer can be called to take the phone if the student resists giving it to the teacher.
This system is a clusterfuck. It's been tried and doesn't work.
Think about all the time it takes to "take up" their phones and put them in "pouches". It wastes probably at least an hour or more a day just dealing with their precious phones. And guess what? Kids WILL bring a secondary phone with them to school. Eliminate them totally. No minor under 18 really needs one...it is a luxury.
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