How about we trust the children and treat them like humans? Or even better help them learn how to be respectful with their phones.
this shit just pisses me off.
How about we trust the children and treat them like humans? Or even better help them learn how to be respectful with their phones.
this shit just pisses me off.
a brand new line. 
Great point. I knew something about that post bothered me. Ditto asking to use the restroom — I refuse to regulate bodily functions.
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Sorry, I disagree. I have been a strong supporter of students having their devices in my classroom since, well since there have been devices. I have always taken the view that well-designed and executed learning activities should draw students in and get them engaged. I have long held the view that teachers who prohibited student devices must be boring and not have student centered classrooms. I have made every possible attempt to foster responsible phone use in my classroom and build the use of student devices into the learning activities in my room.
However, after denying what I’ve been seeing right in front of me for several years now, I finally feel the only responsible thing for me to do as an educator is take the phones away, at least for part of the day. It’s either that or just completely abandon teaching science and spend my entire day playing whack-a-mole with inappropriately used phones.
I totally get how a perfectly normal 16 year old cannot resist the urge to turn away from even the most engaging learning experiences when every conceivable exciting (and often inappropriate) entertainment option is right in their pocket. As a 50 something who is well practiced at tuning out distractions and maintaining focus, I can’t even resist it. I can’t imagine keeping my phone at bay if I were a teenager.
At some point, we owe it to our students to remove this incredibly powerful distraction. If someone were using a jackhammer outside my room, if it didn’t go away, at some point I would do something about it. That’s pretty much how I feel about the phones right now.
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I feel you except my school is one to one with ipads so taking something away really solves nothing for me.
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Totally agree with you. It seems like a jail. If the mesure of “no phones” is for not to amusing with phones, they can also ban the calculators, the peaces of paper, rubbers, etc. 😉
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