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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm teaching a fifth grade class right now and four or five students already have their phones out and I can't do anything about it, really. It does make teaching considerably harder.[/quote]

Why can't you take the phone away from them until dismissal?[/quote]

You can set up parental controls so the phone is limited to emergency calls during school hours. Not sure why you want MCPS to parent your kids.[/quote]

Please for the love of God stop!

Stop!

We all know phones are terribly addictive. Listen to the teachers who say they make teaching/learning so hard.

Ban the phones in high school.  Everything would improve. Kids would talk to each other again. Now there are teens with hoods up and masks on and earbuds in who are so incredibly disengaged.

We know the right thing to do. Parents, please encourage your schools to do it![/quote]

Kids need phones for safety.  It’s not like there are pay phones. [/quote]

This is false. Your child does not need a phone … in my English classroom! At lunch! It’s parents like you that make me sigh- we will never be able to enforce a ban on phones in schools if you cling to this nonsense. There is a phone in the office. Adults in the buildings are walking around carrying phones. Your STUDENT does not need a phone at school. Full stop. [/quote]

You sound like a bad teacher who can’t relate to kids or the dangerous world they live in. Retire already because you have no idea what is going on. Kids can’t get to a phone in the office if they are hiding in a bathroom stall so they don’t get beat up. I’m guessing won’t come to their rescue either. [b]Honestly they can’t even access bathrooms these days because school is so dangerous[/b]. You are out of touch and I’m guessing not a popular teacher. [/quote]

OMG what kind of school do your kid go to? I'm a teacher in a school in a poor school district in an area with medium-ish crime, and there is some pretty intense inter-personal conflict among the students, and not one of my students is afraid to go to the bathroom. I know because they all constantly ask to go! And you know what they're sometimes doing in the bathroom? Making tiktoks. :)

Really, schools are safe places to be. There are very stringent rules about who can enter and students know they will get in big trouble if they fight, or even bring a fake weapon. We don't need an SRO. This is very different from the lives of the students before and after school hours. There are some schools that are unsafe, obviously, but they are still safer than their lives in the outside world. Along with rules about who can and can't enter, they have metal detectors and SROs. [/quote]

What schools have metal detectors and enough SROs?
I can say BCC has very little bathroom access because they don't have enough security. I think there are other MCPS schools with the same issue. If bathrooms were safe, I assume they'd be open, right?

They have two bathrooms open at lunch but the lines are so long, it can take 20 minutes. It is a major issue actually. Especially for girls. Going to the bathroom is banned at the beginning and end of class too. Fights are also a big issue and kids get in trouble for taking video of fights. The principal downplays all of the fights (even when he is harmed) so nobody would ever know what really happens without phones. Phones can also expose SROs who have had a history of not treating every student fairly. We know students will not be believed if it's the word of an SRO vs a student. I don't think that alone is enough of a reason to have phones in schools by the way. My point is that the videos prove the schools are not safe and MCPS is mad the kids expose this.

Personally I think the phone thing is overblown. Some teachers take them and hold them on their desk if they don't want kids using them. It's a pain but it's not that hard. Parents don't need to give kids phones if they don't want them to have them. My high schooler does virtual doctor's appointments at lunch, talks to college coaches and calls or texts us about his schedule or staying after school. Sometimes he needs to take the bus and sometimes we pick him up depending on his appointments and activities (that do change during the day). BCC kids text their friends about where they are going for lunch since they don't use the cafeteria much. I think the ship has sailed on this and we should focus on responsible ways to use the phone rather than banning them. They will sneak the phones in or use their Apple watch to communicate. We just aren't going to get around this. It's better to teach them when to turn them off rather than banning them completely.

I don't think we can create a perfect environment for them. The kids who don't want to learn, will always find something else to do.
Phones create problems and they also solve problems. It's not that simple.[/quote]

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