Reply to Cell Phone Bans in Schools Around Country

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would love it if MCPS bought those locked punches.  The technical bans aren’t sufficient.  [/quote]
+1000 
I'm a HS teacher and the real issue isn't use during class time (although that can be a distraction), it is the non-stop use by students as soon as they think their work is done, through the 5 minute passing period, and into the next class until prompted by the teacher to put them away. It's spending the entire lunch period staring at their phone instead of talking with friends. The saddest thing I see every morning is walking down a hall with 40 kids sitting on the floor staring at their phones, earbuds in, outside their classrooms waiting for the morning bell. They don't talk with each other like they used to. They don't joke around and tell each other interesting things they saw the previous day or discuss what they are doing after school.

Smartphones allow each person to have an individualizes stream of music, media, social media, videos, games, etc. and the kids don't have shared experiences to draw on for social connection. The mental health crisis isn't about what they see on social media, it's their self-imposed social isolation from peers in real life. Students are becoming more and more disconnected from each other and really can't have general conversations at all with peers. This is a huge impact in class when they are supposed to work together. They can't even negotiate who shares their idea first or who is going to write down the lab data or who is going to read which part. They won't compare and discuss answers to worksheets, when an important part of the learning IS having that conversation and then discussing when answers are different.

Don't be deceived by the extroverts or the kids who have friends from elementary school. Are they making new friends? Are they making actual connections with teammates and clubmates, and not just superficial busyness. My classes used to be 25% very social "popular" kids who were friends with everyone, 50% average kids who were chatty with their groups and had a couple of good friends in each class, 25% quiet kids who had another quiet buddy in each class, with just 1 or 2 kids per class who were very disconnected from peers. Now its barely 25% chatty in groups, 50% silent with no connections to others, and 25% so disconnected that they are absent 25-75% of the time. And I'm [b]talking Honors[/b] classes.

I think investing in the Yondr pouches at least for middle school would have a bigger impact on academic achievement and mental health than any curricular changes would.[/quote]

Maybe the chatty went to on-level classes?  :roll: [/quote]

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