Do Phones Belong in Classrooms?
What should be done?
Many schools are wrestling with questions of whether students should be allowed to have phones in classrooms and even whether phones should be at school at all. I’ll provide a teacher’s take on the debate in my Tuesday article.
Please feel free to leave a comment if you have an opinion. I would love to hear what you think.
Have a wonderful weekend!
-Antonette
No phones don’t belong in classrooms.
Another substack writer I read, and recommend, wrote about some of the reasons I’d list here: https://jackbneary.substack.com/p/social-anxiety
It’s not about being connected to “technology”, it is mostly about being connected to nonsense for these students. IMHO.
Oh, this is so hard. My education experience was predominantly in a private middle school which had a zero-tolerance policy for phones in the classroom. On the one hand, teaching is difficult enough without phones and tech, just by the nature of being 9/12/14/insert-age-here! On the other hand, i understand the argument that tech is part of students' lives and the modern world in general, and instead of fighting that, maybe we should lean into it? Teach the kiddos how to use tech safely and responsibly?
All that to say, i imagine it must be incredibly wearying as a teacher to constantly fight the put-up-your-phone fight, AND when the phones are out, they are likely nothing more than a distraction, despite our best plans and intentions. This is a worthy fight, of course, but I don't know that I can make the argument that teachers are given the right resources and ***pay*** to make the fight a sustainable one.
Those were a lot of words that didn't say much; looking forward to hearing your take!