Yondr pouch pilot program at some MS

[Anonymous]

related topic- did anyone get a cell phone violation yet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

We don’t want or need pouches. My kid has self control when it comes to his phone. We waited until mid 8th to get one. Really happy with that decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

We don’t want or need pouches. My kid has self control when it comes to his phone. We waited until mid 8th to get one. Really happy with that decision.

No, he doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

We don’t want or need pouches. My kid has self control when it comes to his phone. We waited until mid 8th to get one. Really happy with that decision.

I really wish parents could/would track their kid's phone usage during the day. I think they'd be shocked at how much it is used, even with "away for the day". Maybe 10% of kids actually have self control. The other 90% do not. If you walk past any middle/high school bathroom mid class period, it is kids scrolling.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Fully support a no phone policy and ask that schools enforce it. Up to them how to do it but there is no place for them during the school day, at all. I don’t want to hear the whining from admins. If the pouch makes them stop whining, fine.

Aren’t the admins now going to be tasked as the messengers going between kids and parents that can’t communicate directly? Strikes me as a lot more work for admins than before.

Most messages do not really need communicated mid day. Plan ahead.

Interesting how the talking points evolve. First, it was don’t worry about communicating with your kid because you can just communicate through the front office. So, now it is, actually what you have to say to your kid or your kid has to say to you is not all that important in our view so no need to communicate at all.

No, I think the point was important messages can be communicated through the front office but there are only so many important messages. How often are you contacting your kid during the school day??

DS is in HS with the phone pockets in each class but when he was in MS, there was an "away for the day" rule. I never had to communicate anything to him the entire two years. One time he asked a teacher if he could use his phone to text me -- he was excited to have received the highest grade in the class on a test. The teacher said it was fine (and also messaged me through Talking Points to tell me a) he allowed the phone usage and b) to tell me how impressed he was with my kid's performance in his class.

DD is at a Yondr school and she thinks this is no big deal.

Your example is exactly why "away for the day" is better than Yondr. The teacher recognized that an exception was warranted; a pouch can't do that. I agree that most during-the-school-day communication is not urgent, but why is that the standard? We are we throwing supportive parent-child communication in with the basket of evils. It is a good thing to have a line of communication with your kid because there are non-urgent things (like sharing excitement over a test) that are important. Yes, they can wait, but no one has explained why they should. If the evils we're combatting are distraction and phone addiction, stopping normal, healthy communication doesn't advance the ball. It is just a side effect. Why tolerate negative side effects when there is a cheaper alternative without them? If we now have to prove there is an emergency to be allowed to talk to our kids, there should be a good reason, and there isn't.

Good lord, land that helicopter.

You are confused. A helicopter parent is one who is heavily engaged in engineering a child's life. Keeping in touch with a kid is normal, healthy parenting.

When it happens before/after school. It does not need to happen during. Let your kid have some space.

I communicate with my husband, my sister, my parents, my friends, and even my in-laws throughout the day when we're all working. The discussions hardly ever concern emergencies. I don't need to have all these conversations but they enrich all our lives. Why would my relationship with my kid be any different? Relationships are ongoing conversations. I'm confused as to why we are casting family communication as a bad thing.

Because your child should be focusing on school during the workday not catching up on what Aunt Jane said about the guy next door who has cancer. Similarly, your husband should be working instead of chatting away with you all day. I definitely do not text people all day long during the workday (and neither do my relatives/friends/acquaintances - I mean, sometimes my retired parents forget that I'm working and send me a text in the middle of the day, but we're chatting away regularly, they ask a question, maybe I will respond when I have a minute). Your interactions throughout the day aren't normal unless none of you have jobs.

Incorrect. Some suggested reading: Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. Given that you structure your life to minimize the annoyances of human interaction, you should have time. but in case you're not the reading sort, I'll sum up. Homo sapiens are social animals and our ability to gossip and social is key to survival and reproduction. "It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest, and who is a cheat." Put anther way, gossip separates us from the apes. It is not just normal, it is what makes us human.

No one is saying you shouldn't gossip, but you have the rest of your day and weekends to do it. How bizarre.

And I'm saying I have yet to hear a good reason why you should decide for me and my kids when we communicate. There is nothing bizarre about this.

The good reason is that they are trying to learn at school and you’re interrupting it

Sigh. Can we stay focused on what this conversation is about? No one is saying phones should be out during instructional time. That's about 3 hours of the school day. Further, no one is saying the whole rest of the day should be spent on phones. Rather, I am saying that we don't have a good reason for bell-to-bell expensive phone jail when there is a calibrated middle ground of putting away phones most of the time with reasonable exceptions. That is supportable but the extreme policy of Yondr is not.

We do. You disagree with it but others think that phones do not belong at school at all, at any time.

Are you one of those families who goes out to eat at a restaurant and you are all looking at your phones? About 25% of restaurant patrons look like this nowadays.

Pitiful.

To be clear, the question is not whether you think you have a good reason to want a Yondr pouch (you can go buy one or not give your kid a phone), it is whether you have a reason that is so good that you get to parent my kids for me by deciding for me how I communicate with my kids during non-instructional time. I doubt I would agree with all your parenting decisions but it's none of my business or the school's business unless you are, say, feeding your kids heroin. If phones were always bad all the time, this would be easy, but that isn't the case. Our policy is to set reasonable limits (such as phones are away in social settings, including meals) while recognizing that phones can be useful tools. My kids are pretty much not into social media, and are not bullying or being bullied. So, if my kids don't even have the problems that are the target of this policy, I don't see why my communication with them should be excused as necessary collateral damage when there are simpler, cheaper solutions that don't cause the collateral damage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

We don’t want or need pouches. My kid has self control when it comes to his phone. We waited until mid 8th to get one. Really happy with that decision.

I really wish parents could/would track their kid's phone usage during the day. I think they'd be shocked at how much it is used, even with "away for the day". Maybe 10% of kids actually have self control. The other 90% do not. If you walk past any middle/high school bathroom mid class period, it is kids scrolling.

Did you know that 73.6% of all statistics are made up?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:related topic- did anyone get a cell phone violation yet?

My MS kid saw the principal confiscate one (and was entertained, fwiw).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

I'm confused as to why I should have to call the office to talk to my kid. He is in middle school, not prison. If you prefer to communicate with your kid through the office, you do you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

I'm confused as to why I should have to call the office to talk to my kid. He is in middle school, not prison. If you prefer to communicate with your kid through the office, you do you.

I mean, you could email him, since he is on his laptop during the school day. If you really must communicate with him.

If it's just to chat, then chat with your DH, not your kids. They are not your social outlet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

I'm confused as to why I should have to call the office to talk to my kid. He is in middle school, not prison. If you prefer to communicate with your kid through the office, you do you.

I mean, you could email him, since he is on his laptop during the school day. If you really must communicate with him.

If it's just to chat, then chat with your DH, not your kids. They are not your social outlet.

FCPS student email addresses do not accept emails from outside of FCPS. Would be good if you knew that or tried it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

I'm confused as to why I should have to call the office to talk to my kid. He is in middle school, not prison. If you prefer to communicate with your kid through the office, you do you.

I mean, you could email him, since he is on his laptop during the school day. If you really must communicate with him.

If it's just to chat, then chat with your DH, not your kids. They are not your social outlet.

FCPS student email addresses do not accept emails from outside of FCPS. Would be good if you knew that or tried it.

You don't have access to your DC's email? You cannot use that to email with him? But you need to text him throughout the school day?

[Anonymous]

Real question - what do you need to talk to your child about throughout the day? I have never had communication with my 8th grader during the day. Maybe a couple of times at the end of the day she texted me to tell me she was staying after for a club.

Love the pouches and that kids are not on phones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fully support a no phone policy and ask that schools enforce it. Up to them how to do it but there is no place for them during the school day, at all. I don’t want to hear the whining from admins. If the pouch makes them stop whining, fine.

Aren’t the admins now going to be tasked as the messengers going between kids and parents that can’t communicate directly? Strikes me as a lot more work for admins than before.

Most messages do not really need communicated mid day. Plan ahead.

Interesting how the talking points evolve. First, it was don’t worry about communicating with your kid because you can just communicate through the front office. So, now it is, actually what you have to say to your kid or your kid has to say to you is not all that important in our view so no need to communicate at all.

No, I think the point was important messages can be communicated through the front office but there are only so many important messages. How often are you contacting your kid during the school day??

DS is in HS with the phone pockets in each class but when he was in MS, there was an "away for the day" rule. I never had to communicate anything to him the entire two years. One time he asked a teacher if he could use his phone to text me -- he was excited to have received the highest grade in the class on a test. The teacher said it was fine (and also messaged me through Talking Points to tell me a) he allowed the phone usage and b) to tell me how impressed he was with my kid's performance in his class.

DD is at a Yondr school and she thinks this is no big deal.

Your example is exactly why "away for the day" is better than Yondr. The teacher recognized that an exception was warranted; a pouch can't do that. I agree that most during-the-school-day communication is not urgent, but why is that the standard? We are we throwing supportive parent-child communication in with the basket of evils. It is a good thing to have a line of communication with your kid because there are non-urgent things (like sharing excitement over a test) that are important. Yes, they can wait, but no one has explained why they should. If the evils we're combatting are distraction and phone addiction, stopping normal, healthy communication doesn't advance the ball. It is just a side effect. Why tolerate negative side effects when there is a cheaper alternative without them? If we now have to prove there is an emergency to be allowed to talk to our kids, there should be a good reason, and there isn't.

Good lord, land that helicopter.

You are confused. A helicopter parent is one who is heavily engaged in engineering a child's life. Keeping in touch with a kid is normal, healthy parenting.

When it happens before/after school. It does not need to happen during. Let your kid have some space.

I communicate with my husband, my sister, my parents, my friends, and even my in-laws throughout the day when we're all working. The discussions hardly ever concern emergencies. I don't need to have all these conversations but they enrich all our lives. Why would my relationship with my kid be any different? Relationships are ongoing conversations. I'm confused as to why we are casting family communication as a bad thing.

Because your child should be focusing on school during the workday not catching up on what Aunt Jane said about the guy next door who has cancer. Similarly, your husband should be working instead of chatting away with you all day. I definitely do not text people all day long during the workday (and neither do my relatives/friends/acquaintances - I mean, sometimes my retired parents forget that I'm working and send me a text in the middle of the day, but we're chatting away regularly, they ask a question, maybe I will respond when I have a minute). Your interactions throughout the day aren't normal unless none of you have jobs.

Incorrect. Some suggested reading: Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. Given that you structure your life to minimize the annoyances of human interaction, you should have time. but in case you're not the reading sort, I'll sum up. Homo sapiens are social animals and our ability to gossip and social is key to survival and reproduction. "It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest, and who is a cheat." Put anther way, gossip separates us from the apes. It is not just normal, it is what makes us human.

No one is saying you shouldn't gossip, but you have the rest of your day and weekends to do it. How bizarre.

And I'm saying I have yet to hear a good reason why you should decide for me and my kids when we communicate. There is nothing bizarre about this.

The good reason is that they are trying to learn at school and you’re interrupting it

Sigh. Can we stay focused on what this conversation is about? No one is saying phones should be out during instructional time. That's about 3 hours of the school day. Further, no one is saying the whole rest of the day should be spent on phones. Rather, I am saying that we don't have a good reason for bell-to-bell expensive phone jail when there is a calibrated middle ground of putting away phones most of the time with reasonable exceptions. That is supportable but the extreme policy of Yondr is not.

We do. You disagree with it but others think that phones do not belong at school at all, at any time.

Are you one of those families who goes out to eat at a restaurant and you are all looking at your phones? About 25% of restaurant patrons look like this nowadays.

Pitiful.

To be clear, the question is not whether you think you have a good reason to want a Yondr pouch (you can go buy one or not give your kid a phone), it is whether you have a reason that is so good that you get to parent my kids for me by deciding for me how I communicate with my kids during non-instructional time. I doubt I would agree with all your parenting decisions but it's none of my business or the school's business unless you are, say, feeding your kids heroin. If phones were always bad all the time, this would be easy, but that isn't the case. Our policy is to set reasonable limits (such as phones are away in social settings, including meals) while recognizing that phones can be useful tools. My kids are pretty much not into social media, and are not bullying or being bullied. So, if my kids don't even have the problems that are the target of this policy, I don't see why my communication with them should be excused as necessary collateral damage when there are simpler, cheaper solutions that don't cause the collateral damage.

Because children are sheep and when your child pulls out their phone to text you, their peers don't have as good of self control and pull out ticktock.
Because studies show that a phone even in the vicinity of another child makes it harder for the other child to focus
Because studies show OVERWHELMINGLY that having a phone on your person increases stress and anxiety levels (regardless of what it's used for). The only way to reduce that is to remove it from your person. Putting it in the backpack isn't enough. Keeping it in your pocket isn't. Only putting it across the room, in a pouch, or in a lock box are effective. Those higher stress levels result in less educational attainment, more social stress (i.e. behavior issues), and lower mental health levels.

You can choose what you want to do when it only affects your own children. Once it affects the school environment as a whole, you shouldn't get to control it.

This year is the first year in over 10 years that I haven't come home from school depressed every day at the behavior of my students. The pouches/pocket charts/whatever policies are changing the way your children interact--for the better. We should be celebrating the results, not trying to undermine them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So grateful our HS is not a pilot HS. Business as usual and my kids are doing just fine.

+1 I hope the few anecdotes we have so far won’t influence them to all get pouches next year.

Why not? If you want to talk to your kids call the office

I'm confused as to why I should have to call the office to talk to my kid. He is in middle school, not prison. If you prefer to communicate with your kid through the office, you do you.

This message pretty much encapulates why teachers are frustrated with parents.