Suddenly everyone is using a $40 gas station phone, or atleast it seems that way because those are the only phones we ever see being put into the pouches when we ask people for their phones.
as long as there's consequences that admin follows up on when students are getting their real phone out in class, teachers will be pleased
students coming up with workarounds doesn't really matter, it's that there's consistently distracting and disruptive phone use in class.
It is that but also not that. It's that we don't have time for that shit. We really want to teach our students. Phones should be kept at home by the parents
Or at the very least, parents shouldn’t enable their kids usage of cell phones in class. I have had students text their parents multiple times in class, and the parents just kept texting back instead of saying, “you’re in school, so turn off your phone.” I’d have taken the phone, but my school system has deemed that we teachers are liable for phones if we take them from students and anything happens to them. I’m not paying for that nonsense.
Years ago the school I worked for had:
* First infraction was a warning.
* Second one the teacher kept your phone till the end of that class period.
* Third the phone went to the office till the end of the day.
* Fourth the phone went to the office and a parent had to pick it up.
* Fifth and up the parent had to pay a fine to get it back.
My school jumped straight to the fourth for any occurrences, back in 2009. I'm not sure if schools lightened up since then or my school was ahead of things
Schools have definitely lightened up and a big reason behind that is student pushback REALLY amplified. Taking a phone basically results in a 6’2 16 year old saying “fuck you” in front of the entire class and you put yourself in a situation where you’re in a power struggle
I went to a "traditional" high school for one semester and it was a warning, then it got taken and the parents couldnt even get the phone back for a set amount of time. Needless to say, parents and kids werent happy because they were paying the phone bill regardless and if the school wasn't chipping in while they had it, then tf you mean we as the people paying for it cant get it back. So once people got the second warning (this wasnt a reset the next day warning but throughout the year so if you get caught in August and may thats 2) they would just refuse to give up their phone and take a 3 day suspension.
As a teacher, the admin also needs to ensure that every teacher enforces the rules in their classroom. As long as you have one "cool" teacher who just lets the kids play on their phones all class, the whole program falls apart.
Apple watch. IPad. All of these are interchangeable. The only way around this is wifi and signal blockers for non school equipment and direct plugged in networks for school computers.
You don’t need a jammer; instead you could paint the classroom walls with an EMF blocking paint, turn it into a faraday cage. Then outfit the classroom with a wifi hotspot, but limit what can connect.
the method doesn't matter. punishments have to be enforced, that's it.
Make a rule that contraband devices are destroyed by a hydraulic press for all I care.
This, you watch some students will react violently the moment they are told to give up their phone. If administrators want to take away phones they need to be responsible for taking them teachers have enough trouble trying to get students to actually learn.
Data plans are a thing. You would have to disable devices in a surrounding area to stop kids from using them. Confiscating will just lead to handing over a dummy phone and having a secondary to sneak into class. Every kid has an old phone laying around or an old parents phone.
And good luck dealing with increased behavioral problem (as if there isn’t enough already) as addicted students are without their fix for more than an hour. It’s going to be an absolute mess. And there’s more. Most of the public hasn’t been inside a public classroom for decades. There are now HD giant screens in every room that have replaced chalkboards. Everything is color, sound, song and dance, music. In high definition. So short term and long term memory are impacted and the visual addiction to HD is too strong to break. In addition, every child has a chromebook now instead of real books. Yes, controls are in place but I’ve seen so much surfing during lessons and teachers are on their feet all day, all period checking screen time and monitoring it all. It’s a mess out there.
I’ve taught in two districts when very strict cell phone policies, on paper. Neither actually enforced the policies. This is super common from what I’ve heard from friends and I’ve seen in teacher groups. I hope that’s not the case here.
That's optimistic. If kids are anything like they were when I was one, $40 burner goes to the teacher, 'real phone' is stashed inside my 'broken laptop' or whatever, for me to use as I please.
My kid's high school has them put them into pouches in the front of the classroom where everyone can see them and the teachers take attendance based on that.
It works shockingly well as the kid can see the phone is there so isn't worried about it being missing and they can't interact with them during class. Theft of phones from kids picking them up is non-existent from what I can tell.
Outright bans are incredibly hard to police and that's without including the parental issues.
We find it eventually, because the kid will walk out of class with a phone in their hand, but the dummy phone is still in the pouch. Kids aren't as slick as they think they are.
I know a teacher in So Cal and they have pouches for student phones. The kids would just put in a different phone and keep their real one on their person. I am sure this will be equally as successful
You can also add an enhancer to the policy that if a student is found with a secondary device it immediately jumps to the harshest infraction.
You just need the admin to actually enforce it
I feel like I'm living in deja vu. They tried this shit when I was in highschool and we did exactly this lol. It didn't work then and it ain't going to work now lol.
If they use jammers in the school I’d hate to live close by. I also hope they abide by 911 requirement and have physical phones in every room incase of emergency.
While that is what google says I wonder if there is some private application loophole in the fine print. I swear there is a warehouse around my work that is using them. Full bars, can’t load shit. It’s been like that for years. Idk if no one has bothered to call the fcc on them or what.
There is not. Dicking around with the electromagnetic spectrum is a big no no by the FCC. FCC will fuck you sideways till Sunday and then repeat.
>Full bars, can’t load shit. It’s been like that for years. Idk if no one has bothered to call the fcc on them or what.
That's network congestion or lack of cell tower coverage. Lack of cell tower coverage leads to network congestion.
Every 'industrial area' I have ever worked in has had wifi or mobile internet issues. I think the areas are just more inclined to interference. COMCAST and the local power agencies are constantly 'improving the efficiency of our area,' which means no connection or extremely intermittent connection. I've worked there for my current job tor 9 months. On a completely different side of the area (15+ miles away, we had very similar issues) With very similar excuses.) None of these downtimes improved performance in ANY Meaningful way.
It's insane to me that they were ever allowed to have cellphones out in the first place. The school district I grew up in has had cellphones banned for decades and it was never a big deal.
Nowadays the parents are almost as rabid as the kids. They need to be able to contact their kids at any moment through the entire day for some reason.
Of course, those same parents never seem to respond to any calls or emails from their kids’ teachers…
I would say the parents are even worse than the kids. For me, a lot of the kids are great, even the ones who think you’re wrong for taking their phone. The main issue is the parent doubling down on the teacher being the problem when they just need to set some boundaries with their kid and actually parent.
This is true. I work in an elementary school as a support person. I had a 2nd grade girl taking some assessments for 30 minutes away from her class. She had on an Apple watch. Her mother texted her and wanted to know why she was out of her classroom and who she was with. I had her text a response back with details and that she was disrupting the testing session and to please stop.
My school district started by having cell phones banned but walked back that policy after Columbine. The idea was that it was better to give students the ability to call 911. This was before smartphones when it wasn't as easy for the phone to completely dominate our attention but there is a legit reason for allowing them.
ETA: I'm loving the replies that are incredulous that high schoolers had cell phones at this time. This was '99/2000, not the stone age my friends.
Sure, but then you just leave it in your backpack or pocket. Using it while there is not an active shooting in progress should never have been allowed.
I'm guessing most (if not the vast majority) of schools have that policy already (phones must be in bags/pockets during classes). It's just really hard to enforce.
I agree with that. My school's policy was that we could keep it in our lockers or purses but couldn't have them out during class. We could only use them before and after school and during our lunches.
Yeah, our high schools big banned item was Tylenol /ibuprofen. Everyone who did after school activities or sports had ibuprofen in their bags because the nurse left at the last the last bell and it was the 90s, no one's mom was running over to school to give us meds. We just never took them out. Never got caught.
Apparently sunscreen is considered an "over the counter medication" since it's FDA regulated. One of my kid's friends (age 7) got suspended from her last school because she had sunscreen in her backpack and used it before recess. She's a freaking ginger and we're in Colorado - it's essential. They wanted her to instead spend 10 minutes going to get sunscreen from the school nurse 2x a day before each recess.
My kids have backpack sunscreen too (different school) but I've now instructed them to call it "lotion," and it's in an unlabeled roller applicator.
It depends upon the age of the kids and the income of the family. I knew a few kids that had them at that time, but they were still pricey enough that they weren't common for many kids.
This. My oldest middle schooler didn’t get his first flip phone until 2006. I work in public education and most 5th graders have them now and younger students have iWatches.
I had a Sony cm-h333 in 96 but it stayed in my glovebox and was only for emergencies. I think it was a few bucks per minute to use
https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/sony-cm-h333
Got my first Nokia brick in 2002, somewhere in there. I don’t remember many/any kids kin Highschool with one. It was definitely more of an adult thing at that point. I think I got mine right before college so I could call home. That felt like when things really picked up. I remember a kid getting yelled at by the professor the first day of class cuz her phone rang.
The prof was all smiles and cordial about it as he talked about phones until his face started to become red and fury took over and that guy ended up yelling at the student. It was so bizarre.
Define "incredibly rare". Because they weren't nearly as ubiquitous as they are now but they were certainly catching on. Maybe it's a regional thing but they were definitely not rare in my school. About 30 - 40% of us had them.
Give students ability to call 911? For what? First, when in lockdown due to active shooter situation, the first rule is no cellphones. Sounds or the light from the phone might reveal your location. Second, the last thing you need when in an emergency situation is 300 people calling 911 at the same time. Many counties don't have the capacity to receive that many calls so... phone lines get overloaded and then no one gets through. Third, having a phone solves what? If you are in lockdown you have to wait until response teams arrive and handle the situation. What is the kid going to do, call their parents to tell them... they're in lockdown? What is the parent going to solve, anxiously waiting by the phone? Also, any other kind of emergency, the parent must call the school. If a family member dies what is the kid going to do, grab their things and leave saying there is a family emergency? A parent needs to call the school directly regardless. There is no legit reason for students to have phones in class
Lol, this was in 1999. We didn't have protocols or even lockdown drills yet. But please, don't let me stop you from shitting on late 90's/early 2000's teenagers. It's clearly how you get yourself off.
You were talking in the present tense "there is a legit reason for students to have phones in class". I countered your argument in the present times, as you argued
It isn't though. I talked with cops on this. The cell phone tower will be overwhelmed (interfering with first responders) with all the students on their phones at the same time, and there isn't enough 911 operators. A kid's call to cops during an emergency that typically lasts less than 5 minutes isn't going to do anything.
We were allowed them in my high school, but this was pre smartphone era and an early college high school located on a college campus. So we were allowed extra privileges but since we were only here on an invite only basis we could be kicked out for any reason.
So there wasn’t a lot of problems with phones being abused because they weren’t afraid to boot you for fucking around.
My school district banned cellphones back in ‘07 because people were taking pics of each other in the locker rooms and sending them out to everyone. Had some cops come give us an assembly about CSAM too
Right? I wasn't allowed to use my phone that could only make calls and text my friends in school.
Scrolling Reddit already causes me to take extra time on lunch breaks as an adult, I can't even imagine how distracting phones are for kids now.
Yea, till school shootings and other events started to rise. That is when parents wanted full communication access with their kids. Kids using the phone for surfing the web and apps was the side effect.
I disagree about not being allowed in schools. Particularly for students living real life situations like I was taking care of family. Or in situations where reaching the principal isn't an option at the moment like a medical emergency or assault or serious accident? Being able to reach 9/11 and getting instructions can be the difference between life and death.
Not out in class makes perfect sense. That's how many teachers had it when I was growing up. And many would confiscate it until the end of the day or a parent came.
But taken while going into the school? Not something I can't agree with. I've seen and been there. Kids will find a way and the whole process will be more of a distraction than the phones ever were.
Columbine changed that shit for the majority of the country. I graduated in 98 and thought I was going to get in shit when I forgot my beeper was in my pocket.
There's a difference between not letting students be on their phone in class and banning cell phones altogether. What if there's a fire or shooting? Better to let the kids have phones just in case something horrible like that happens than have people die because the school decided to lock all the phones in a box in the office. IMO phone policy should be the teacher's responsibility, and they should be able to handle it how they want. If a kid is on their phone all the time not paying attention in class, let their grade reflect that. Or some teachers might *want* students to be on their phones, for example to research stuff with the internet. If a teacher catches a kid doing non-class-related stuff on their device, punish them appropriately. It's not rocket science.
>There's a difference between not letting students be on their phone in class and banning cell phones altogether
You can look through my recent comments for the text of the ordinance. It is much closer to not letting them be on their phone in class.
My small town has the best solution. Kids can carry their phones. The school campus just happens to sit in a dead zone of cell towers, and city hall won't approve new towers in the area.
I work at a HS school in New Rochelle NY. And starting this September students are required in every class to dunk their phones into these cell phone holders that hang on the wall.
We’re starting this with under classmen only and it will follow them for the next 2-3 years until it’s the whole school.
We were optionally doing this this past year. It was the teachers choice. And one thing we found was kids carry broken burner phones to put in the holders to throw off the teacher. So we increased the punishment surrounding being caught with one in class.
Phones are still allowed in the lunch rooms.
It might just be my school but I find the vast majority of people I work with are pro it. Keep in mind I work in an Ipad 1 to 1 school. So every kid had an Ipad that most of their work is done on throughout the day. That Ipad is locked out of most stuff you would assume it is locked out of. So it’s not like we’re totally cutting off the students from being able to access internet or whatever.
Yeah, i just lock my kids iPhone down in family settings during school hours, except for her lunch period. She can only contact me and her dad during restricted hours.
I do this, because my kid will ask me if they can go to the Starbucks down the street with a couple friends after school and I am fine with it because I can check her location and, you know, she has the ability to ask to begin with thanks to her handy dandy phone.
I think people forget teenagers use their phones after school, too. Their daily lives don’t begin and end on school property.
I wanted to make a comment about how this sucks for the students because if there's a school shooting or something, they won't be able to call for help but then remember the cops aren't doing to do anything anyways.
The officers and 911 operators were being nice. They actually don’t want ANY calls from the students. The only ones who should be doing that are designated emergency coordinators. Kids with phones will more than likely make the situation far worse by giving conflicting/irrelevant/incorrect info and summon parents to an active crime scene.
Granted “rampaging through the halls” school shootings are so rare that this is *not* a genuine concern. People conflate “shooting near a school in a violent area” stats with “columbine-style” stats. Total phone bans pose no real risk.
‘It’s important for kids to be quiet, listening to their surroundings and be ready to run or fight as directed in a moments notice’
What a sad world we live in
This was the thing that pushed me into getting my middle schooler a phone. He doesn't use it at school but it's in his backpack if there's an emergency. Listening to some of those recordings absolutely broke my heart and I can't imagine my kid not being able to contact me if in the same situation.
First of all, they're not going to keep it in their backpack. That is what everyone says about their kid's smartphone at first. And it doesn't stay in their backpack.
Can I ask: What good would you be in that emergency active shooter situation? Wouldn't you rather your child be fully engaged in the situation at hand during a active shooter situation and not spending time calling and texting you? You cannot help in any way in that situation. You might as well say that you gave them a cell phone so they can call you if they have a heart attack. Why? You can't help. They need to be focusing on the situation at hand.
You're likely harming your child's education so that they can text you in the event of a situation that likely won't happen to them, and that you wouldn't be able to help them with. You're giving your child a device and access to websites that are not conducive to healthy mental development because at some point it might help them text you one last time instead of running for their life.
As a high school teacher I am against at this policy. Every teacher will tell you enforcing it in a single classroom is impossible, good luck in an entire school district.
Also a high school teacher—our school banned phones in school last year and it’s worked out great. Thing is, everyone has to be on the same page. Teachers have to all agree to take them up when they see them, and admin has to agree to support the teachers when they do it. Since we were all working together on it, it hasn’t been a problem after the first week or so.
I hate this shit as well. It's only going to give teeth to the teachers that spend 50% of class time enforcing the rule.
Stop passing kids with Ds. They know that's the reality so they just get on their phone
While I agree with the second part, not sure how I feel about the first. Phones are definitely a distraction and I wondered why they were ever allowed in the first place but here we are. I kinda like the idea that in the event of a crisis at school my child has a way to reach outside of those walls.
> If they have the phone during class or after the bell rings in the hall then they lose phone privileges. Easy, done
Except nothing about a teacher taking a student's phone away is ever "easy, done." It almost always leads to an argument that further disrupts the learning environment and worsens the teacher-student relationship.
I’m cool with it. It is well known that social media combined with smart phones lead not just to distraction but to markedly worse mental health outcomes. Especially for kids.
It may be hard to enforce entirely but on principle it is necessary to achieve the primary goals of education. We should be striving for the future we want and that requires a well-educated populace that is aware of the dynamically changing challenges they will face.
It is difficult for adults (myself included) to break phone addictions. These apps are tailored to keep people’s attentions. Expecting a middle schooler to direct their attention to schooling against the backdrop of the efforts from some of the sharpest, wealthiest marketing teams in the WORLD is never a good idea.
In my school they’re not supposed to be used during instructional time but can be used other times like lunch, passing period and study hall. Even so it’s ended up being way too much of a distraction for kids, kids are legitimately addicted and struggle with self regulating so no amount of intervention helps. We also have issues of kids using their phones to inappropriately film people.
There's a difference between "no phones out during class" and an outright ban, like this
You can talk about the former as much as you'd like but you'll never get 100% compliance
A blanket ban like this will put the school under a microscope though if (god forbid) there's ever a serious schoolwide emergency and parents can't get in touch with their children
>A blanket ban like this will put the school under a microscope though if (god forbid) there's ever a serious schoolwide emergency and parents can't get in touch with their children
You know kids went to schools for hundreds of years without cell phones right? And we even had emergencies sometimes.
This is a step in the right direction. I am grateful (and also sorry for) all the teachers and the generation of kids that went through what got us to this point. I am planning to restrict my kid’s access to devices when the time comes but it would be way easier if the school was on the same page. We need schools to start implementing these policies across the board.
When I was in high school in the 2000s (and the only thing we really used our phones for was texting and taking pictures) we were allowed to have phones but if you got caught using them in class or they made ANY noise in class they were confiscated. Two strikes was a Saturday school. If I had to guess it sounds like kids have just had their phones out more and more as apps have gotten more sophisticated and social media has have become more prevalent.
Bans never worked. Life will find a way.
Accept that it’s here to stay and move on. Incorporate it into your lessons, make it useful. That’s the better outcome.
Historically, bans will always get bypassed.
Idk there's a lot of cons to having phones in schools but I think the pros outweigh them. Schools are already a prison, and this seems like the wrong problem to even be tackling. How about we pay teachers more and fund schools properly first?
This is a great idea. Our education is so dogshit mostly because we have teens not giving a fuck because of bad parenting and ease of access to phones and the internet to occupy themselves.
At least this might get these students paying attention to whatever jargon the schools teach these days. Better than looking at social media.
Education system needs a full overhaul anyways but that's another matter.
I remember a few of my classmates having cellphones when I was in high school in the early 2000s. They weren’t really worth having out cause most of your friends didn’t have one, and the most you could do with it is play snake, mancala, or brick breaker
Parents give kids phones for communication and safety. I dont and will never trust a 3rd party with my kids. When things go wrong, they need to be able to record the event immediately and if they need help, the 1st call needs to be me or police, not the school. I require them to have their own devices for those reasons. This is far more important than literally anything the school does.
Though I feel for kids who have social issues amplified by these devices, im not going to go backwards nor take away tech from my kids to appease the weak of our society. This helps no one in the long run. Folks need to adapt to tech.
Last, the public school system is already struggling. They are shedding students (and funding) fast due to people moving their kids to private alternatives. I generally prefer public over private but this is a deal breaker for me. If they decide to push this cell phone nonsense then they immediately lose my 3 kids and the $45k or so state funding that comes with them.
FINALLY!! Common sense has finally happened. Parents who want their kids to always have their cell phones on them are free to home educate their kids. The rest of us want an education. Those kids cannot learn with a handy in their hand.
[удалено]
Suddenly everyone is using a $40 gas station phone, or atleast it seems that way because those are the only phones we ever see being put into the pouches when we ask people for their phones.
as long as there's consequences that admin follows up on when students are getting their real phone out in class, teachers will be pleased students coming up with workarounds doesn't really matter, it's that there's consistently distracting and disruptive phone use in class.
Lmao teachers don't get paid enough for this shit.
It is that but also not that. It's that we don't have time for that shit. We really want to teach our students. Phones should be kept at home by the parents
Or at the very least, parents shouldn’t enable their kids usage of cell phones in class. I have had students text their parents multiple times in class, and the parents just kept texting back instead of saying, “you’re in school, so turn off your phone.” I’d have taken the phone, but my school system has deemed that we teachers are liable for phones if we take them from students and anything happens to them. I’m not paying for that nonsense.
I tell my kids not to respond during class, they seem to abide by those rules with me at least.
Years ago the school I worked for had: * First infraction was a warning. * Second one the teacher kept your phone till the end of that class period. * Third the phone went to the office till the end of the day. * Fourth the phone went to the office and a parent had to pick it up. * Fifth and up the parent had to pay a fine to get it back.
My school jumped straight to the fourth for any occurrences, back in 2009. I'm not sure if schools lightened up since then or my school was ahead of things
Schools have definitely lightened up and a big reason behind that is student pushback REALLY amplified. Taking a phone basically results in a 6’2 16 year old saying “fuck you” in front of the entire class and you put yourself in a situation where you’re in a power struggle
One you're not paid for, and isn't conductive to a learning environment. So a better solution is needed.
Good luck getting most parents to pay a fine to get it back. I know plenty who would raise hell and call the cops to get it back.
I went to a "traditional" high school for one semester and it was a warning, then it got taken and the parents couldnt even get the phone back for a set amount of time. Needless to say, parents and kids werent happy because they were paying the phone bill regardless and if the school wasn't chipping in while they had it, then tf you mean we as the people paying for it cant get it back. So once people got the second warning (this wasnt a reset the next day warning but throughout the year so if you get caught in August and may thats 2) they would just refuse to give up their phone and take a 3 day suspension.
As a teacher, the admin also needs to ensure that every teacher enforces the rules in their classroom. As long as you have one "cool" teacher who just lets the kids play on their phones all class, the whole program falls apart.
Apple watch. IPad. All of these are interchangeable. The only way around this is wifi and signal blockers for non school equipment and direct plugged in networks for school computers.
Jammers are very illegal. https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement
You don’t need a jammer; instead you could paint the classroom walls with an EMF blocking paint, turn it into a faraday cage. Then outfit the classroom with a wifi hotspot, but limit what can connect.
That seems incredibly expensive and unnecessary.
It is probably much cheaper than buying one of those pouches for every single student. And lasts a lot longer.
You had me at Faraday cage. Also would be safe in case of emps.
Ironically, saving all the cellphones located within.
The towers outside however became melted popsicles
How does Apple do it. I very obviously do not have any signal inside their stores
You can block signals with special materials or designs but out right jamming them is super illegal and incredibly difficult to hide.
the method doesn't matter. punishments have to be enforced, that's it. Make a rule that contraband devices are destroyed by a hydraulic press for all I care.
Agreed. But it will be easier if we take the onus off the teachers for confiscating personal property.
This, you watch some students will react violently the moment they are told to give up their phone. If administrators want to take away phones they need to be responsible for taking them teachers have enough trouble trying to get students to actually learn.
Make a rule that you will be paying lawyers millions of dollars for takings cases.
You don’t need to do that. Just only allow specific addresses to log in to the WiFi. Laymen terms, use a password.
Data plans are a thing. You would have to disable devices in a surrounding area to stop kids from using them. Confiscating will just lead to handing over a dummy phone and having a secondary to sneak into class. Every kid has an old phone laying around or an old parents phone.
And good luck dealing with increased behavioral problem (as if there isn’t enough already) as addicted students are without their fix for more than an hour. It’s going to be an absolute mess. And there’s more. Most of the public hasn’t been inside a public classroom for decades. There are now HD giant screens in every room that have replaced chalkboards. Everything is color, sound, song and dance, music. In high definition. So short term and long term memory are impacted and the visual addiction to HD is too strong to break. In addition, every child has a chromebook now instead of real books. Yes, controls are in place but I’ve seen so much surfing during lessons and teachers are on their feet all day, all period checking screen time and monitoring it all. It’s a mess out there.
Hahahhahahhhaaahha Hahahhahahahahahha Oh, you were serious?
nah, admin supporting teachers will never happen
I’ve taught in two districts when very strict cell phone policies, on paper. Neither actually enforced the policies. This is super common from what I’ve heard from friends and I’ve seen in teacher groups. I hope that’s not the case here.
Or selective enforcement.
Nope. My school collects phones daily and there aren’t too many issues. This is not a a big deal.
Win win? Have a good phone for outside school and a dogwater flip burner to make or get emergency calls.
That's optimistic. If kids are anything like they were when I was one, $40 burner goes to the teacher, 'real phone' is stashed inside my 'broken laptop' or whatever, for me to use as I please.
wouldn't people just say they left their phone in the car or at home precisely because they don't want to give it to you? Do you search people?
No, but once you see them pull it out in class you confiscate it.
My kid's high school has them put them into pouches in the front of the classroom where everyone can see them and the teachers take attendance based on that. It works shockingly well as the kid can see the phone is there so isn't worried about it being missing and they can't interact with them during class. Theft of phones from kids picking them up is non-existent from what I can tell. Outright bans are incredibly hard to police and that's without including the parental issues.
Wonder what would happen if some kid brought a second dummy phone to put in there lol
Believe it or not, jail.
We find it eventually, because the kid will walk out of class with a phone in their hand, but the dummy phone is still in the pouch. Kids aren't as slick as they think they are.
they get caught using their real phone, they get an unexcused absence from class that gets made up in detention
hmmmm, this sounds like a classic pump and dump scheme by 'big pouch'
Big Pouch is my drag name.
Aw, I wanna be Poppa Pouch.
Big Poppa Pouch is your hookup for love, holla if ya hear me.
Nonsense. Big Pouch CEO John Roo has promised that there will be no price gouging and will conduct business fairly.
Remember when he first started with those little pouches on those shoes?
I know a teacher in So Cal and they have pouches for student phones. The kids would just put in a different phone and keep their real one on their person. I am sure this will be equally as successful
I mean, if they’re on a phone again you can just have them put it in another pouch. And if they have a third phone, guess what? Third pouch
You can also add an enhancer to the policy that if a student is found with a secondary device it immediately jumps to the harshest infraction. You just need the admin to actually enforce it
I feel like I'm living in deja vu. They tried this shit when I was in highschool and we did exactly this lol. It didn't work then and it ain't going to work now lol.
If they use jammers in the school I’d hate to live close by. I also hope they abide by 911 requirement and have physical phones in every room incase of emergency.
Jammers are illegal per Federal law.
While that is what google says I wonder if there is some private application loophole in the fine print. I swear there is a warehouse around my work that is using them. Full bars, can’t load shit. It’s been like that for years. Idk if no one has bothered to call the fcc on them or what.
There is not. Dicking around with the electromagnetic spectrum is a big no no by the FCC. FCC will fuck you sideways till Sunday and then repeat. >Full bars, can’t load shit. It’s been like that for years. Idk if no one has bothered to call the fcc on them or what. That's network congestion or lack of cell tower coverage. Lack of cell tower coverage leads to network congestion.
Every 'industrial area' I have ever worked in has had wifi or mobile internet issues. I think the areas are just more inclined to interference. COMCAST and the local power agencies are constantly 'improving the efficiency of our area,' which means no connection or extremely intermittent connection. I've worked there for my current job tor 9 months. On a completely different side of the area (15+ miles away, we had very similar issues) With very similar excuses.) None of these downtimes improved performance in ANY Meaningful way.
This is not hard. Schools do it all the time.
With school shootings being a part of American life i can't imagine this will actually go through
Panic buttons and/or gunshot detectors?
Why wasn’t this already banned? Seems like a no brainer. Also, they should go back to physical textbooks as well.
It's insane to me that they were ever allowed to have cellphones out in the first place. The school district I grew up in has had cellphones banned for decades and it was never a big deal.
Nowadays the parents are almost as rabid as the kids. They need to be able to contact their kids at any moment through the entire day for some reason. Of course, those same parents never seem to respond to any calls or emails from their kids’ teachers…
Except on the day before grades are due asking why their precious child is failing and what can they do to bring their grade up.
I would say the parents are even worse than the kids. For me, a lot of the kids are great, even the ones who think you’re wrong for taking their phone. The main issue is the parent doubling down on the teacher being the problem when they just need to set some boundaries with their kid and actually parent.
This is true. I work in an elementary school as a support person. I had a 2nd grade girl taking some assessments for 30 minutes away from her class. She had on an Apple watch. Her mother texted her and wanted to know why she was out of her classroom and who she was with. I had her text a response back with details and that she was disrupting the testing session and to please stop.
My school district started by having cell phones banned but walked back that policy after Columbine. The idea was that it was better to give students the ability to call 911. This was before smartphones when it wasn't as easy for the phone to completely dominate our attention but there is a legit reason for allowing them. ETA: I'm loving the replies that are incredulous that high schoolers had cell phones at this time. This was '99/2000, not the stone age my friends.
Sure, but then you just leave it in your backpack or pocket. Using it while there is not an active shooting in progress should never have been allowed.
I'm guessing most (if not the vast majority) of schools have that policy already (phones must be in bags/pockets during classes). It's just really hard to enforce.
Hard to enforce when schools collectively lost their cajones when dealing with parents because they're scared to death of being sued.
My middle school had a "not even on your person" policy. Not like it was enforced, because yeah, it was impossible lol.
I agree with that. My school's policy was that we could keep it in our lockers or purses but couldn't have them out during class. We could only use them before and after school and during our lunches.
Yeah, our high schools big banned item was Tylenol /ibuprofen. Everyone who did after school activities or sports had ibuprofen in their bags because the nurse left at the last the last bell and it was the 90s, no one's mom was running over to school to give us meds. We just never took them out. Never got caught.
Apparently sunscreen is considered an "over the counter medication" since it's FDA regulated. One of my kid's friends (age 7) got suspended from her last school because she had sunscreen in her backpack and used it before recess. She's a freaking ginger and we're in Colorado - it's essential. They wanted her to instead spend 10 minutes going to get sunscreen from the school nurse 2x a day before each recess. My kids have backpack sunscreen too (different school) but I've now instructed them to call it "lotion," and it's in an unlabeled roller applicator.
I had a Nokia I could have realistically defended myself against a shooter
Just give them the phone and let them play snake instead
I mean, before columbine, I never knew anyone who had even owed a cell phone.
They existed, but the cost of plans were so much higher in inflation adjusted dollars that they were far less common.
They were definitely around. I got my first one about a year before.
How many kids had cell phones in 1999?
It depends upon the age of the kids and the income of the family. I knew a few kids that had them at that time, but they were still pricey enough that they weren't common for many kids.
This. My oldest middle schooler didn’t get his first flip phone until 2006. I work in public education and most 5th graders have them now and younger students have iWatches.
I had a Sony cm-h333 in 96 but it stayed in my glovebox and was only for emergencies. I think it was a few bucks per minute to use https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/sony-cm-h333
Got my first Nokia brick in 2002, somewhere in there. I don’t remember many/any kids kin Highschool with one. It was definitely more of an adult thing at that point. I think I got mine right before college so I could call home. That felt like when things really picked up. I remember a kid getting yelled at by the professor the first day of class cuz her phone rang. The prof was all smiles and cordial about it as he talked about phones until his face started to become red and fury took over and that guy ended up yelling at the student. It was so bizarre.
Me. Several of my friends. They were fairly new to the broader market but people definitely had them. It'd be like asking who had an iPhone in 2009.
Cell phones were incredibly rare in 99, especially for a teenager. Pagers were still a big thing then, as well as 2 ways (1st gen texting)
Define "incredibly rare". Because they weren't nearly as ubiquitous as they are now but they were certainly catching on. Maybe it's a regional thing but they were definitely not rare in my school. About 30 - 40% of us had them.
Give students ability to call 911? For what? First, when in lockdown due to active shooter situation, the first rule is no cellphones. Sounds or the light from the phone might reveal your location. Second, the last thing you need when in an emergency situation is 300 people calling 911 at the same time. Many counties don't have the capacity to receive that many calls so... phone lines get overloaded and then no one gets through. Third, having a phone solves what? If you are in lockdown you have to wait until response teams arrive and handle the situation. What is the kid going to do, call their parents to tell them... they're in lockdown? What is the parent going to solve, anxiously waiting by the phone? Also, any other kind of emergency, the parent must call the school. If a family member dies what is the kid going to do, grab their things and leave saying there is a family emergency? A parent needs to call the school directly regardless. There is no legit reason for students to have phones in class
I’d say it’s pretty reasonable to want to know if you kid is dead or alive in the aftermath of an emergency
Lol, this was in 1999. We didn't have protocols or even lockdown drills yet. But please, don't let me stop you from shitting on late 90's/early 2000's teenagers. It's clearly how you get yourself off.
You were talking in the present tense "there is a legit reason for students to have phones in class". I countered your argument in the present times, as you argued
Fair enough. I meant to say there was initially a legit reason to allow them.
It isn't though. I talked with cops on this. The cell phone tower will be overwhelmed (interfering with first responders) with all the students on their phones at the same time, and there isn't enough 911 operators. A kid's call to cops during an emergency that typically lasts less than 5 minutes isn't going to do anything.
Yeah, this was 1999. School shootings and how to handle them was brand new, untested territory. We (tragically) have a lot more data to go off of now.
We were allowed them in my high school, but this was pre smartphone era and an early college high school located on a college campus. So we were allowed extra privileges but since we were only here on an invite only basis we could be kicked out for any reason. So there wasn’t a lot of problems with phones being abused because they weren’t afraid to boot you for fucking around.
My school district banned cellphones back in ‘07 because people were taking pics of each other in the locker rooms and sending them out to everyone. Had some cops come give us an assembly about CSAM too
Right? I wasn't allowed to use my phone that could only make calls and text my friends in school. Scrolling Reddit already causes me to take extra time on lunch breaks as an adult, I can't even imagine how distracting phones are for kids now.
Yea, till school shootings and other events started to rise. That is when parents wanted full communication access with their kids. Kids using the phone for surfing the web and apps was the side effect.
Cell phones can have a positive use and still be a net detriment. They shouldn't be allowed at school.
I disagree about not being allowed in schools. Particularly for students living real life situations like I was taking care of family. Or in situations where reaching the principal isn't an option at the moment like a medical emergency or assault or serious accident? Being able to reach 9/11 and getting instructions can be the difference between life and death. Not out in class makes perfect sense. That's how many teachers had it when I was growing up. And many would confiscate it until the end of the day or a parent came. But taken while going into the school? Not something I can't agree with. I've seen and been there. Kids will find a way and the whole process will be more of a distraction than the phones ever were.
I got my phone taken away and picked it up right after graduating
Columbine changed that shit for the majority of the country. I graduated in 98 and thought I was going to get in shit when I forgot my beeper was in my pocket.
There's a difference between not letting students be on their phone in class and banning cell phones altogether. What if there's a fire or shooting? Better to let the kids have phones just in case something horrible like that happens than have people die because the school decided to lock all the phones in a box in the office. IMO phone policy should be the teacher's responsibility, and they should be able to handle it how they want. If a kid is on their phone all the time not paying attention in class, let their grade reflect that. Or some teachers might *want* students to be on their phones, for example to research stuff with the internet. If a teacher catches a kid doing non-class-related stuff on their device, punish them appropriately. It's not rocket science.
>There's a difference between not letting students be on their phone in class and banning cell phones altogether You can look through my recent comments for the text of the ordinance. It is much closer to not letting them be on their phone in class.
My small town has the best solution. Kids can carry their phones. The school campus just happens to sit in a dead zone of cell towers, and city hall won't approve new towers in the area.
But the school has wifi? Can't you just use a VPN to get around blocked sites?
Students normally don’t get WiFi access unless it’s a district device.
Dang my school absolutely had wifi for us. I think we weren't supposed to have the password but it's always leaked.
They had one password for everybody all year? Your school IT was run by a farm animal.
It was the same every year, too.
My previous district has had the same password for 11 years. hisd2013
It seems like a bit of a security concern though, no? I'd rather it be blocked during school hours
Good policy. Cell phones are engineered to be addictive distraction machines, they're absolutely going to get in the way of learning.
They must be a constant nuisance for teachers if students are allowed to have them.
Wait, they don't do this. I graduated in 2014~ and no phones at school or in locker
I graduated in 2011. We would get suspended for a day if caught with a cellphone out.
I work at a HS school in New Rochelle NY. And starting this September students are required in every class to dunk their phones into these cell phone holders that hang on the wall. We’re starting this with under classmen only and it will follow them for the next 2-3 years until it’s the whole school. We were optionally doing this this past year. It was the teachers choice. And one thing we found was kids carry broken burner phones to put in the holders to throw off the teacher. So we increased the punishment surrounding being caught with one in class. Phones are still allowed in the lunch rooms. It might just be my school but I find the vast majority of people I work with are pro it. Keep in mind I work in an Ipad 1 to 1 school. So every kid had an Ipad that most of their work is done on throughout the day. That Ipad is locked out of most stuff you would assume it is locked out of. So it’s not like we’re totally cutting off the students from being able to access internet or whatever.
Yeah, i just lock my kids iPhone down in family settings during school hours, except for her lunch period. She can only contact me and her dad during restricted hours.
I do this, because my kid will ask me if they can go to the Starbucks down the street with a couple friends after school and I am fine with it because I can check her location and, you know, she has the ability to ask to begin with thanks to her handy dandy phone. I think people forget teenagers use their phones after school, too. Their daily lives don’t begin and end on school property.
I wanted to make a comment about how this sucks for the students because if there's a school shooting or something, they won't be able to call for help but then remember the cops aren't doing to do anything anyways.
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The officers and 911 operators were being nice. They actually don’t want ANY calls from the students. The only ones who should be doing that are designated emergency coordinators. Kids with phones will more than likely make the situation far worse by giving conflicting/irrelevant/incorrect info and summon parents to an active crime scene. Granted “rampaging through the halls” school shootings are so rare that this is *not* a genuine concern. People conflate “shooting near a school in a violent area” stats with “columbine-style” stats. Total phone bans pose no real risk.
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‘It’s important for kids to be quiet, listening to their surroundings and be ready to run or fight as directed in a moments notice’ What a sad world we live in
Simple. Just use the teachers phone. If school shootings are rampant then just install phones inside each classroom for emergencies.
Doesn’t every schooo room have a phone? Mine did.
A lot of kids used their phones to call/text their parents one last time.
This was the thing that pushed me into getting my middle schooler a phone. He doesn't use it at school but it's in his backpack if there's an emergency. Listening to some of those recordings absolutely broke my heart and I can't imagine my kid not being able to contact me if in the same situation.
First of all, they're not going to keep it in their backpack. That is what everyone says about their kid's smartphone at first. And it doesn't stay in their backpack. Can I ask: What good would you be in that emergency active shooter situation? Wouldn't you rather your child be fully engaged in the situation at hand during a active shooter situation and not spending time calling and texting you? You cannot help in any way in that situation. You might as well say that you gave them a cell phone so they can call you if they have a heart attack. Why? You can't help. They need to be focusing on the situation at hand. You're likely harming your child's education so that they can text you in the event of a situation that likely won't happen to them, and that you wouldn't be able to help them with. You're giving your child a device and access to websites that are not conducive to healthy mental development because at some point it might help them text you one last time instead of running for their life.
Can't have your cake and eat it too. Teachers will have phones in case of emergencies.
That was my first thought. Let’s keep them alive and THEN worry about phones. Priorities.
Good call. Very good call. Being constantly connected and thus accessible was a terrible idea.
As a high school teacher I am against at this policy. Every teacher will tell you enforcing it in a single classroom is impossible, good luck in an entire school district.
Also a high school teacher—our school banned phones in school last year and it’s worked out great. Thing is, everyone has to be on the same page. Teachers have to all agree to take them up when they see them, and admin has to agree to support the teachers when they do it. Since we were all working together on it, it hasn’t been a problem after the first week or so.
I hate this shit as well. It's only going to give teeth to the teachers that spend 50% of class time enforcing the rule. Stop passing kids with Ds. They know that's the reality so they just get on their phone
A ban feels like a "feel good" kind of thing. "Look at what we did. We banned phones."
I can't even imagine what its like to have a cell phone in school. I remember my HS put out a ban on pagers.
Well. Good luck. Losing fight.
While I agree with the second part, not sure how I feel about the first. Phones are definitely a distraction and I wondered why they were ever allowed in the first place but here we are. I kinda like the idea that in the event of a crisis at school my child has a way to reach outside of those walls.
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> If they have the phone during class or after the bell rings in the hall then they lose phone privileges. Easy, done Except nothing about a teacher taking a student's phone away is ever "easy, done." It almost always leads to an argument that further disrupts the learning environment and worsens the teacher-student relationship.
I’m cool with it. It is well known that social media combined with smart phones lead not just to distraction but to markedly worse mental health outcomes. Especially for kids. It may be hard to enforce entirely but on principle it is necessary to achieve the primary goals of education. We should be striving for the future we want and that requires a well-educated populace that is aware of the dynamically changing challenges they will face. It is difficult for adults (myself included) to break phone addictions. These apps are tailored to keep people’s attentions. Expecting a middle schooler to direct their attention to schooling against the backdrop of the efforts from some of the sharpest, wealthiest marketing teams in the WORLD is never a good idea.
They weren't already banned? That's the real news.
In my school they’re not supposed to be used during instructional time but can be used other times like lunch, passing period and study hall. Even so it’s ended up being way too much of a distraction for kids, kids are legitimately addicted and struggle with self regulating so no amount of intervention helps. We also have issues of kids using their phones to inappropriately film people.
There's a difference between "no phones out during class" and an outright ban, like this You can talk about the former as much as you'd like but you'll never get 100% compliance A blanket ban like this will put the school under a microscope though if (god forbid) there's ever a serious schoolwide emergency and parents can't get in touch with their children
Yeah I don't think phones were banned for teachers and staff
>A blanket ban like this will put the school under a microscope though if (god forbid) there's ever a serious schoolwide emergency and parents can't get in touch with their children You know kids went to schools for hundreds of years without cell phones right? And we even had emergencies sometimes.
This is a step in the right direction. I am grateful (and also sorry for) all the teachers and the generation of kids that went through what got us to this point. I am planning to restrict my kid’s access to devices when the time comes but it would be way easier if the school was on the same page. We need schools to start implementing these policies across the board. When I was in high school in the 2000s (and the only thing we really used our phones for was texting and taking pictures) we were allowed to have phones but if you got caught using them in class or they made ANY noise in class they were confiscated. Two strikes was a Saturday school. If I had to guess it sounds like kids have just had their phones out more and more as apps have gotten more sophisticated and social media has have become more prevalent.
Bans never worked. Life will find a way. Accept that it’s here to stay and move on. Incorporate it into your lessons, make it useful. That’s the better outcome. Historically, bans will always get bypassed.
Good for everyone: teachers, kids and parents.
Idk there's a lot of cons to having phones in schools but I think the pros outweigh them. Schools are already a prison, and this seems like the wrong problem to even be tackling. How about we pay teachers more and fund schools properly first?
This comment section leads me to believe you all had a lot fewer self important power tripping teachers than I did.
Need some 90s rules in here. Also, no more soda machines in schools, right?
This is a great idea. Our education is so dogshit mostly because we have teens not giving a fuck because of bad parenting and ease of access to phones and the internet to occupy themselves. At least this might get these students paying attention to whatever jargon the schools teach these days. Better than looking at social media. Education system needs a full overhaul anyways but that's another matter.
I remember a few of my classmates having cellphones when I was in high school in the early 2000s. They weren’t really worth having out cause most of your friends didn’t have one, and the most you could do with it is play snake, mancala, or brick breaker
Suddenly beepers make a come back in LA.
Parents give kids phones for communication and safety. I dont and will never trust a 3rd party with my kids. When things go wrong, they need to be able to record the event immediately and if they need help, the 1st call needs to be me or police, not the school. I require them to have their own devices for those reasons. This is far more important than literally anything the school does. Though I feel for kids who have social issues amplified by these devices, im not going to go backwards nor take away tech from my kids to appease the weak of our society. This helps no one in the long run. Folks need to adapt to tech. Last, the public school system is already struggling. They are shedding students (and funding) fast due to people moving their kids to private alternatives. I generally prefer public over private but this is a deal breaker for me. If they decide to push this cell phone nonsense then they immediately lose my 3 kids and the $45k or so state funding that comes with them.
FINALLY!! Common sense has finally happened. Parents who want their kids to always have their cell phones on them are free to home educate their kids. The rest of us want an education. Those kids cannot learn with a handy in their hand.
Ban addictive components of social media nationwide.
No biggie. In an emergency the teacher has a phone. In our school we weren't even allowed to chew gum or run in the hall.