GDS Phone Ban

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our school uses SchoolPass but it’s for the parents to use when picking up a kid early, arriving late, or being out. If the kids are already in school and they are allowed to sign themselves out (only upperclassmen), they do by going to the front office and putting their pin/ID into the electronic device in the office - they don’t use the app on their phones. They have to do this for an unexcused late arrival, too.

There are, of course, other options. GDS just needs to find one. The fact that they didn't find one before rolling out the announcement that they are going to be phone free doesn't look good.

My friend whose kid goes there said that she thinks the school's email indicated that they will become more draconian (pouches or checking them in) if necessary.

I'm the PP you responded to. I'm specifically talking about finding a solution to the School Pass. Asking kids to keep their phone off in their backpack, and also requiring them to take them out and use them in order to go to lunch isn't great. It also prevents kids from just leaving the phone at home. There are other ways to have kids sign in and out, either using School Pass, or using something else. The school needs to figure out one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t like phone bans for hs. I have a recent grad and there were times we needed to be in touch and going through the school office would have been a pain. If you are just about ready to be in real world then the real world includes phones. I totally get bands for younger years but not hs. I also think it will drive kids to overuse phones after school. I have come to believe being too strict on anything has unintended consequence.

I'm with you. If there is an emergency I want my kid to have the phone in his bag.

I'm a teacher and have a basket in the front of the room for any phones I see come out. Otherwise they can keep them in their bags. I find laptops to be more troublesome!

Yeah, my DD would come home from HS last year with all kinds of stories of what kids were doing on their open laptops during class...

Ugh.

We saw this in upper school tours too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s the between class time that is problematic - that is time when they should be hanging out with their friends and socializing, not idling on their phones or waiting to hear from their moms - which I’m sure contributed to anxiety, like worrying that they will miss a text from you and not respond etc. Somehow we all handled our school lives without communicating with our parents all day. And I definitely get it, I have a teenager and sometimes I need to get him a message during the day also but the benefits of not having a phone far outweigh the drawbacks in my mind.

I purposely don’t text people until a convenient time for them. Nanny before she shows up, kid after last period, spouse in the morning not late at night

Why would you want to bother your kid during school about something after 3pm?

And they need to turn off their 50 alerts a day. No one needs to shop the aviators sale between classes bc they got an ad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does every school have that or just GDS? I went to school down the street - I hate to be like back in my day! But back in my day, we did just sign out and back in when we left campus - and if we weren’t there for our first class, that’s how they knew we weren’t on campus. Sometimes kids snuck off campus and got in trouble and that was just life and part of growing up. This technology is not necessary.

School pass is a small angel funded app company. For whatever reason gds thought it could read licenses plates and help with k-8 car pool pick ups. But it doesn’t. Walker talkies it is.

So yeah, it’s just an online check in system, overkill. Curious what we pay per year nowadays for it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s the between class time that is problematic - that is time when they should be hanging out with their friends and socializing, not idling on their phones or waiting to hear from their moms - which I’m sure contributed to anxiety, like worrying that they will miss a text from you and not respond etc. Somehow we all handled our school lives without communicating with our parents all day. And I definitely get it, I have a teenager and sometimes I need to get him a message during the day also but the benefits of not having a phone far outweigh the drawbacks in my mind.

I purposely don’t text people until a convenient time for them. Nanny before she shows up, kid after last period, spouse in the morning not late at night

Why would you want to bother your kid during school about something after 3pm?

And they need to turn off their 50 alerts a day. No one needs to shop the aviators sale between classes bc they got an ad.

As a teacher I once had a 5th grader leaving class to go sneak text their mom test scores/big news… the mom also worked in the school. You’d be shocked at how clueless some parents are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s the between class time that is problematic - that is time when they should be hanging out with their friends and socializing, not idling on their phones or waiting to hear from their moms - which I’m sure contributed to anxiety, like worrying that they will miss a text from you and not respond etc. Somehow we all handled our school lives without communicating with our parents all day. And I definitely get it, I have a teenager and sometimes I need to get him a message during the day also but the benefits of not having a phone far outweigh the drawbacks in my mind.

I purposely don’t text people until a convenient time for them. Nanny before she shows up, kid after last period, spouse in the morning not late at night

Why would you want to bother your kid during school about something after 3pm?

And they need to turn off their 50 alerts a day. No one needs to shop the aviators sale between classes bc they got an ad.

As a teacher I once had a 5th grader leaving class to go sneak text their mom test scores/big news… the mom also worked in the school. You’d be shocked at how clueless some parents are.

I once had a kid with an apple watch, whose parent decided to send a string of texts yelling at her, and threatening her with punishment because she hadn't put her dish in the dishwasher before leaving for school. These texts arrived during a math test, causing kid to burst into tears, disrupting the test for her and for every other kid in the room.

Did the parents not know their kid was in school?

[Anonymous]

Seriously!?

I am done with an Apple Watch for kids.

I got a series of photos from an 11 yos bday. In EVERY photo at the party my kid and another are goofing around on their Apple Watches together. The whole party!

How rude and embarrassing. And now she doesn’t get to wear it out as much.

[Anonymous]

These devices are also just one more thing for the teachers to have to police - in addition to doing their actual job which is teaching!! But as we can see for every parent who sees the value in NOT having them there is a parent who wants their kid to have one. The schools have to do the hard thing - which is based on evidence not out of nowhere - and put a real stop to them. As in go beyond saying, please keep your phone in your locker and don’t use it during school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These devices are also just one more thing for the teachers to have to police - in addition to doing their actual job which is teaching!! But as we can see for every parent who sees the value in NOT having them there is a parent who wants their kid to have one. The schools have to do the hard thing - which is based on evidence not out of nowhere - and put a real stop to them. As in go beyond saying, please keep your phone in your locker and don’t use it during school.

Yes, welcome to our world where our HS senior has never had access to their phone while in school. Glad you are catching up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These devices are also just one more thing for the teachers to have to police - in addition to doing their actual job which is teaching!! But as we can see for every parent who sees the value in NOT having them there is a parent who wants their kid to have one. The schools have to do the hard thing - which is based on evidence not out of nowhere - and put a real stop to them. As in go beyond saying, please keep your phone in your locker and don’t use it during school.

No. An increasing majority of parents, even divorced two home ones, do not want smartphones and devices at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These devices are also just one more thing for the teachers to have to police - in addition to doing their actual job which is teaching!! But as we can see for every parent who sees the value in NOT having them there is a parent who wants their kid to have one. The schools have to do the hard thing - which is based on evidence not out of nowhere - and put a real stop to them. As in go beyond saying, please keep your phone in your locker and don’t use it during school.

Yes, welcome to our world where our HS senior has never had access to their phone while in school. Glad you are catching up.

Which school?

[Anonymous]

I teach at a school with a phone ban. Kids quickly adapt to doing several “phone” activities on their laptops. The boys play video games all day or watch YouTube and the girls text on their MacBooks and scroll TikTok online. Or online shop. They are just as zombie-like, but with bigger screens.

I hope schools realize that phones bans are a great first step, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

Screens should be down when kids are trying to listen to a teacher. The video game playing habits of a few kids ends up distracting the students trying to learn.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely it doesn't solve the problem. But laptops are not as mobile or well-hidden. Now are they as addictive. It's a start.

[Anonymous]

Teachers were pushed during and after Covid to go 100% digital. Tech companies may have been pushing this shift and school districts ate it up. Now teachers are slowly moving back towards pencil and paper. The tech-Ed industry is huge and very profitable

[Anonymous]

One of the biggest social media apps is Google docs. Kids use it to write messages to each other when they’re supposed to be collaborating