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High school teacher here. On test days, I have a hanging shoe rack with each of my kids’ names on a sleeve.
I tell them, “Please put your devices in the sleeves and then you can have your test. When you hand in your test, you can have your device back. If you don’t put your phone in the sleeve, your test will be a 0”
At the beginning of the year they also helped create our classroom rules and norms, and agreed to do this.
Out of 28 kids, maybe 10 actually do it. The other 18 get 0s. Then I get angry emails from parents about their kids getting “tyrannical grades” on their tests.
Then the cycle continues
Dude, if I got caught on my phone in hs (less than 10 years ago), it would be confiscated and my mum would have had to come and get it. It’s crazy how quickly that’s changed.
Bro same, we would get a suspension in middle school if we even had our phone on our person. They literally only texted then though and it cost 10¢/msg
Man... Memory unlocked. Kids these days have it so easy, unlimited everything basically... 🤣 I miss my green-screen phone, it's weeklong battery & basically indestructible self...
That was the worst  cus it was like right in the middle or next to the end button.
*Accidentally turns on Internet*
Nooooo...off! Off! Off!
I taught high school for a while (been out of the classroom since 2013. Managing phones was a nightmare. We used to confiscate and take to the office, then parent had to get it after school. Parents were awful. Lots of accusations about “damaging” the phones. So we got a bunch of paper bags donated and if they were caught with their phone, they had to drop it in the bag and we’d stapled it closed and it sat on the desk. Never left their sight but they couldn’t use it.
Yeah I'm a full fledged millenial, who is not so far removed from school, and the fact that these kids get to just blatantly be on their phones during class is so absurd to me. I understand HAVING a phone on you "in case of emergency" but there is literally zero reason they need to actively be on it during class. This is an absolute joke that teachers can't confiscate phones or punish kids for using it during class.
Millennial grad here, and *to this day,* I *still* have a habit of texting/looking at my phone under the table or otherwise out of sight, for as little time as possible, when with other people. It was so hammered into us that phone use was unacceptable!
I mean, that's generally the *polite* thing to do. Millennial here as well, and it drives me insane when younger coworkers just pull their phones out mid conversation as if we're not actively talking to each other
Yes. We don’t *actually* want to fix the problems. I just had this discussion with my admin. It was about sleeping in class, but same with phones. After addressing any health or home life situation, if it’s determined that it’s just poor behavior choices by the student, we immediately call to have their parents pick them up. We don’t even have very involved parents, but these behaviors would end REAL fucking quick if parents start having to leave work to deal with such stupidity.
so for a lot of parents how much time do they have with there kids i mean i see this with my sister with her kid.
that kid spends first all day from 8:30-16h at school then from 16h to 18h in afterschool care and the she picks her up .
dad works shifts so he home around 22:30 in the evening when he has the late shift if he has the early shift he picks her up 16h after school. but a lot of the time he ends up getting the late shift because suprise suprise everbody wants the early shift to pick up there kids and the single parents take those most
with counting for extra curriclars like she's does judo,dancing and our country version of girlscouts,
they pretty much see there kid 3hrs a day on average on weekdays and more on weekends... and this is a stable income couple so there not taking extra jobs just having 2 fulltime employment jobs
but a lot of people need to do sidehustles to make ends meet and where wondering why kids arent being raised properly anymore?
when the hell are parents supposed be raising there kids when there constantly working. this also causes a lot of guilt feeling at the parents so when they do see there kids they want to have happy times not feeling like there constantly punishing there kids for there school behaviour so it becomes a vicious cycles aswel
its why with my partner we already decided that she will be cutting back on her hours when we have kids. I would like to also cut back on my hrs but i make more money and we would become fincially unstable if i did and no longer be able to pay our morgage
The other big thing is that phones also got really expensive. Like, it was one thing to confiscate a kid's phone when it was worth maybe $100. You'd feel significantly less comfortable confiscating a device worth up to (or more than!) $1000, knowing that, depending on your administration, you could be hung out to dry for any scratch or crack on the screen. Also, parents today can be very shirty about confiscated phones: "she's needs her phone so I know that she gets home safe!"
I mean, iPhones were easily $600 when I was in school, so myself and my classmates definitely had pricey devices. I also went to a school out of area, so I had a 20-25 minute drive to get there, never mind back when I rode the bus. They just didn’t have any patience for kids being on phones during class, which is such a low bar it’s crazy it’s come to this.
The irony is, I had T-Mobile, which had nearly no coverage near my school, so I couldn’t even use my phone once I got there. Not that I would have though, since there weren’t the sort of apps available that kids would have used like today. Best we had was clash of clans!
Back when it was just your screen made all white, turned up to max brightness.
I had an iPod touch back when I first started smoking weed my first year out of highschool. I got tricked by an app claiming that it could use the phones touch sensors to weigh things and thought I could use it to make sure I wasn't being undersold.😑
I truly don't understand why that isn't the rule anymore? It's not that difficult to keep your phones on silent and put up in your bookbag during class
Don't forget that most of these teens grew up with phones and tablets in their faces... It's hard to break a habit that they've had their entire lives.. A habit that they see as "normal".
Let's take your typical 16 year old high school junior. They were born in 2008. The first iphone debuted in 2007. By the time they hit age 3 in 2011, the iPhone 4 was popular, and so was the Samsung Galaxy S2. The first gen ipad was released in 2010. Current high school students don't know of a time prior to online gaming, smartphone apps, and instant gratification. Those kids were alsoo already born in the youtube and video streaming, and social media era as well.
No doubt, but there isn’t much I can say about the obvious breach of academic integrity that comes with having a mini computer in your hand and earbuds in during an assessment. 1/4 of my time grading assignments is being a detective trying to find out who used chatGPT to write their programs to begin with. Having a test in the classroom is one of the few times I have complete control over testing their comprehension of what we learn in class.
I'm sorry teaching has become so difficult over the last 10 years. I'm in my early 30s. I still carried change in my pocket to use a payphone. I didn't have social media until I was in my late teens, and my first cell phone required an "unlimited texting" add-on plan.
These kids don't realize the long-term damage they're causing .
Thank you for the flashback of “unlimited talk and text for 9.99/mo”! Hahaha
But it’s not all bad, this is just one story from one classroom during one school year. A lot of great things happen in my room and school every week. Were undoubtedly in a strange time in terms of education, accountability for students and educators, priorities, generational differences in parents, yadda yadda
The kids can’t possibly realize the long term damage they’re causing; their brains simply aren’t developed enough yet and an addiction is an addiction no matter what it is. I blame the parents, as well as society at large for letting this become the norm. My kids are 4 months old and I really hope for some kind of social overhaul regarding smartphones and kids so that I don’t have to fight it. I will though, because this is unacceptable and if I put the phones/tablets in their hands then that’s on me.
It's crazy that i'm not even 30 yet, and we only ever used a pen and paper. A computer could be accessed in the IT area of the school, but it was only meant for specific classes, and even then it was an "occasion". It all happened so fast.
Don’t forget the part where there was a world wide plague and kids lived through their phone entirely for a year.
My brother is a teacher and says people constantly underestimate how the plague fucked kids up
This right here. There was a 2-3 year period where the developmental process for most kids severely slowed down. Those kids lost 2-3 years of communicating and interacting with other kids. However, tech was already a problem prior to the pandemic.
It's not a habit, they're addicted and it's by design.
Silicon valley designed these phones to keep people as addicted as possible.
I'm nearly 28. The year that smartphones started really being something that everyone owned was about 2013. I was a junior/senior in high school and distinctly remember when most people started pulling them out of their pockets.
It's wild to me to think that people born now 12 years after me are sophomores in high school.
There’s a whole documentary about how former silicone valley experts won’t let their kids have phones because of how damaging it is.
ETA: it’s called the Social Dilemma and is more about social media and how bad it is for everyone, especially kids.
“Hard”… one of the things about school is that you can’t do every day things. Phones should get locked away during lessons, period. That’s crazy that they’re even involved in class.
Everything about this classroom looks wrong. Why are there still upside down chairs on the tables during a lesson? I feel like there’s just not a standard being set to actually adhere to.
Yeah. When I was in high school a good 10 years ago, we were not allowed to bring our phones to school. If a teacher found out you had it with you it was immediately confiscated. I find it insane that they allow them in the classroom now. Kids can go without a phone for 6 hours.
My wife teaches elementary and has a student who has missed over 50 days of school. They throw a tantrum at home so they can stay home and play video games. How the state hasn’t stepped in yet is nuts.
Wowwwww.
My kiddo missed quite a few days, he has type 1 diabetes and when he gets a minor cold, it can be complicated. That's besides the normal diabetes issues that occasionally pop up.
His ass got "BECCA" billed, I guess it happens if your kid misses more than 10 days in a year or 5 in a month. It was easily explained and dropped (husband and my fault for not using the website to input absences vs sending a written note).
I'm amazed 50 days isn't leading to some serious intervention.
The school has offered mental health resources, including a facility where the student can get help and learn in a more suitable environment but the parents won’t go through with it and the school can’t force them.
A lot of schools, honestly. Parents freak out when schools try to mandate a no-phone policy. (Not all of them, obviously, but often it's enough of them to make sure that policy never happens.)
That must be a US thing. I'm on the other side of the pond and I only know one kid in my son's 3rd grade class with a phone, and it's definitely not allowed to be out anywhere on school grounds. Not even an old Nokia. I guess for safety reasons it's appealing.
It definitely could be a US thing.
I'll add that it actually makes safety worse. Not long ago, a fire started sin the school I teach at. Since everyone texted their parents as soon as the alarms went off, all of their parents showed up to get them... Meaning that it took the fire engines almost 30 minutes to actually make it to the school in all of the traffic. And then they had to try to move the parents' cars from where the engines needed to be.
Oof yeah. I remember back in 99 right at the end of the school year my science teacher went to demonstrate the power of Acetylene (a welding gas), telling us it was "very energetic" when ignited. He filled a huge balloon with it like 16" diameter, tied it to a yardstick and held it over the Bunsen burner. HUGE boom. Black smoke covering the ceiling. This was weeks after Columbine so the administration was on edge a bit, and after evacuating the school and getting the ok from the fire department we went back to the lab, and they just told him to please not do it again. Most parents didn't hear about it until dinner.
Very different times.
It's clearly changed, though. We got a Playstation at one point and my neighbor had an N64. But we still mostly played outside. That was more of a rainy day thing for us. We just legitimately preferred hockey in the street and riding bikes.
It could be a lot of things; Separation anxiety, obstinacy, apathy for grades, lack of foresight. I just know I’d rather give them a choice rather than pick a fight. They are cognizant enough to appreciate the consequences of something as simple as a test grade.
I do have plenty of those stories too! Haha It’s definitely not all doom and gloom and me yelling at clouds. Just the other day one of my students got a scholarship to a school they otherwise would never be able to afford going to for Esports! They’re going to be playing on the school’s Overwatch 2 team.
This kid struggles in almost everything academically due to dyslexia but they’ve found a path forward through their love and talent in the game.
Also a high school teacher. I feel your pain. Kids straight up would rather fail and have their devices than challenge themselves and grow. It’s exceedingly disheartening, and scenes like the one in this video make me feel bad for the kids who care and want to learn. I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for them.
As far as parents go, the way they respond to your rule says it all. Instead of tearing their own kid a new one for making the decision to fail, they blame you. The current generation are fucked because the parents are fucked.
Omg really?
I remember we had a similar rule with one of my teachers pre2010. He had the cellphone box. Everyone puts their phone in the box *daily*. On silent, specifically.
If your phone goes off and it's with you at your desk, you get in trouble (whether it was demanding it in the box with light reprimanding or detention if it's a consistent issue - never really got that far). However, if your phone goes off in the box, he just asks you to turn off the ringer - unless it's actually a call. If a call goes off and it's in the box, he has permission to *answer the call*.
One time, and only once in my time in that class, a kid's phone rang in the box. Teacher answered it, hilariously of course. He ended up handing the phone to the dude, because it was his mom calling to excitedly tell him that he got into his choice college. It was both hilarious and adorable
The parents who complain are wild. Aside from not being happy about their child's failing grade, even though their child was fully responsible for that, I'm guessing they want the phone on kiddo at all times so the lifeline isn't cut? They need to stop helicoptering their kids, they'll be fine without 24/7 phone access just as those parents were fine when their parents couldn't reach them back in the 80s or 90s.
Good job. You’ve set some BASIC rules and guidelines to help them succeed, and they can’t bother to have an ounce of discipline. Their loss. Their parents failed.
Yeah if you’re a parent and you bitch at the teacher for taking your kids phone during class instead of bitching at your kid for knowing better, yeah you failed
I would be careful about how the shoe rack is monitored, my brother had his laptop stolen in college because the professor made them put all their bags in a corner and someone just took it
This is a good point, and that’s a nightmare what happened to your brother! I’ll keep this in mind when it’s time for everyone to collect their devices again.
One of my favorite things to hear from an admin. Just let your class of 300 turn in late work and take make up exams whenever they can.
Yeah, ok. I have endless time. No need to get back to my family or have a life, let alone hold any of these young adults accountable.
Gross. I teach dual enrollment in high school and I keep emphasizing to students that their professors won't be giving them extensions or holding their hands.
As a senior in a dual enrolled high-school program, the teachers that say this are at least twice as "difficult" as a regular CC professor. They care more, and it shows.
As a TA, no they don't fail. If too many kids fail, then it makes you look bad, and then you make *your* professor look bad. I had to pass two students who either failed or didn't take the midterm and final. Not to sound like a boomer, but if I had failed midterms and finals, I would have never passed. But they get points just for showing up and taking open book online quizzes, so that amounts to enough for a C.
The entire goal then becomes to entertain them enough that they don't go on their phones. The onus is on the faculty to do more and more and more for the same shitty wage. Everything revolves around activities, games, "participation." Apparently lecturing makes you a shitty instructor now. But for a full time grad student with another job and a thesis to write, I don't have time to come up with new little activities to coddle 20 year olds every week. Especially when my own professor is completely checked out in terms of teaching us anything about teaching. Education is the last thing universities are concerned with anyway. I've decided not to go into academia. It's a fucking shitshow. The entire thing disgusts me.
I was a TA for a capstone senior design course at a top-15 university. We had a kid that literally didn’t show up to anything besides the first day intro. The other TA and I had to beg the professor to give him a C+ instead of a B+. It’s all a total joke.
I’m recently back to school after some years working and it’s insane. I was never a star student but just having a notebook open and actually listening puts me at the top of a lot of my classes. The students had the nerve to tell one of the teachers the final he’s giving us a study guide for is too much. It’s a capstone course that I’m the only person that has more than a 50% attendance rate. Like my man you made your bed you’ve been to 3 classes yeah you got a lot to study.
I’ve had a very similar experience, went back to school at 37. People (17-22) just straight up never go to class or miss weeks at a time, open up their laptops and just ignore the professor, same with their phones. I end up answering 90% of the questions in all my classes because literally no one raises their hands or attempts to answer questions from the teacher, no one interacts in class or speaks to anyone unless they already know each other, it’s pretty shitty and it’s 100% on the students.
I quit teaching uni because they were putting me on all online classes. Nothing more heart breaking than watching the cameras turn off one by one. Dean wouldn’t let me enforce it with grade deductions because “some students may not have the ability to afford a laptop with a camera” or some BS, despite the fact that we’re charging the same and the kids are learning less.
>Nothing more heart breaking than watching the cameras turn off one by one.
If it makes you feel better, when I'm in online classes I turn my camera off whenever allowed but I'm still listening/taking notes. It's just id prefer to be in pajamas chilling vs on camera and formal.
I worked from home for years. I would NEVER have my camera on. Also funny how little of this discussion asks whether the kids could pass the test.
Almost like school is teaching kids how to do busy work and not learn shit.
...
Oh, yeah, that's what 20 years of schooling in the hands of private think tanks and billionaires achieved. Imagine that... (Pointing out how many of the "solutions" in this thread actually caused all these problems in the first place.)
[Here's](https://apnews.com/article/a4042e82ffaa4a34b50ceac464761957) an Associated Press story about how Bill Gates personally fucked with public schools for two decades.
And [here's](https://philanthropydaily.com/gates-philanthropy-failure-common-core/) the autopsy.
And [here's](https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/campaign-to-sabotage-texas-public-schools/) new attempts to do the exact same thing in Texas all over again.
Public education is being sabotaged on purpose and the people doing it are using their own failures to convince people to give them even more power.
To be fair, I was a student during the COVID online classes and it helped me immensely. I don't know why, but having the ability to do other things at the same time made it easier for me to concentrate. Drawing for example helps me focus on what people are saying, even though it might look like I'm not paying attention.
I can't speak for all students obviously, but I would assume that a lot of the older Gen Z students that graduated high school before COVID actually paid attention.
That’s insane to me. I would kill to go back to school. I cannot for the life of me imagine wasting that much money just to dick around in public.
Positive side, maybe the job market will have less competition with the lower number of grads ?
Yeah with all the laptops, phones, headphones, half empty desks and chairs stacked on the half empty desks - it looks like an after school/detention situation
social media has exploded with the trend of constantly misleading people and staging scenarios for likes and engagement - it doesn't matter if the context is a complete lie, only likes and comments matter.
I'm patiently waiting for the stupid trend to die down and for society to learn to stop liking that crap. Too many idiots always in the comments "what does it matter if it was fake?! I thought it was funny / I liked the message"... yeah, and gullible idiots are happy because they don't even realize they are stupid, but that isn't something to be proud of.
It’s not gonna die. This is gonna be our version of the “Nigerian Prince scam”. It’ll finally die away when enough people younger than us stop falling for it, and then something else will pop up. On the plus side, maybe more and more people will get better and better at critical thinking because of it
Yeah, what I was thinking. No reason to completely kill the volume unless maybe it was pretty obvious he wasn't teaching, just making some obligatory announcement.
I had a phone with a sliding keyboard when I was in high school. A couple of kids maybe had an iPhone 3g. I can only imagine what its like now in schools with every single kid having a smart phone.
My kids' phones don't turn on until a certain point of the day. They can make emergency calls but not play games/surf/text, etc. I've seen people letting 10-year-olds take full on cell phones into class.
Bonkers.
Bless you - seriously, I think a big difference in kids coming up will be those who parents kinda helped them monitor when and what kind of phone use is appropriate, verse just free control of a phone at any age.
District I used to sub at wouldn't let you do anything but call the parents if a student was using it/had it in their hand. They take them out knowing they cannot be taken away by force.
The parents are to blame. One Karen bitching their kid had their phone taken away and threatening to take it to the superintendent or further is enough to ruin it for everyone. A large portion of people who have kids really shouldn't. People don't know how to parent and think their job is to defend their kid at every turn...that's not what parenting is.
This is exactly what happened to me, and it's why I quit teaching. I took a student's phone away, turned to go lock it in my desk, and the student threw his chair at me while my back was turned (while i was 8 months pregnant no less). My admin literally wanted me to wait another hour and a half to get medical attention, because "they had no one to cover my class". I called an ambulance myself and left, so the principal had to cover my class and the parent literally tried to argue that I had it coming for taking his phone. They had no remorse. I needed stitches in the back of my head, and I got a concussion. My admin then had the audacity to try to pressure me not to press charges on the student in question. I got all the usual lines "You'll ruin his life", "He's just a kid, he didn't mean to", "there will be serious consequences for him already, he will be punished enough". I resigned my position the next day on the grounds of the school not providing a reasonable expectation of a safe working environment. In the week that followed, all that happened to said student was he received a 3 day suspension. I pressed charges on the student, and they charged him (as a juvenile) with assault with a deadly weapon. That was 3 years ago. I still have not returned to classroom teaching despite having 7 years of teaching my own class + a year of student teaching, and a masters in education. Instead, last year I went back to school and became a lactation consultant. Now I teach prenatal classes to expecting moms and new moms in the hospital how to feed their babies. I make 2.5x the pay, easily. I have normal work hours, no work outside of my contract hours, excellent benefits, and i dont get assaulted. America needs education and cultral reform immediately, or they won't have any teachers left.
This is a winning story. You took control and found great success. Much more earning potential as you grow in your career too.
Irony is that the school systems need smart and capable teachers like you to help kids grow and succeed but the lack of accountability that is expected from the kids from both school administrators and their parents prevents the loyalty and sacrifice needed to have good teachers hang around.
Thank you! I'm really happy in my new job 😊 I still get to teach, and working with new parents during a really stressful time in their lives is rewarding in a similar way. I miss some parts of teaching kids, but things in my life are so much less stressful now. I don't come home emotionally drained every day, and my time off is actually my time instead of planning for work, so that's nice!
It does make me pretty sad to see the state of things and the direction we are going even further towards, though. I think until standards all around are both raised and enforced, and the current socio-cultural challenges are overcome, children in our country don't stand a chance, and neither do we. I just hope people wake up and think about what the future in the US will look like without teachers. Since I've resigned, about 50% of all of the colleagues I knew and worked with have retired or quit for various reasons related to burnout and student/parent behavior.
How awful. It sounds like you are OK and have a much better career path now. I'm also a former teacher and I'm so tired of these stories! It makes me so sad. Good luck to you.
It should not be the responsibility of the teacher to take it away. They can ask for it but if the student refuses, you send them to the principal's office.
Then they refuse that. Then you gotta send the student resource officer in, where other kids can take an out of context clip of the kid being detained, and call it fascism lmao
We’re cooked
I think it depends on the school. My daughter is in middle school and they can carry their phones but they need to go in a box in the front of the room during class. Of course some kids don't do this but they're disciplined if they're caught with their phones in class. They're only allowed to use them in "green zones" like hallways and the cafeteria.
Admittedly this was a few years ago now but when I was in HS we'd reached the point already where everyone had a smartphone and we didn't have anything complicated like this. Everyone had a phone on them and they...just weren't allowed to use it in class. Only a couple little shits refused to comply.
"The problem with education isn't setting the bar too high and failing. It's the opposite. It's setting the bar too low and succeeding." Sir Ken Robinson, Phd Ed.
Yeah watched a video the other day about teachers and what they deal with. Kids with 3rd grade reading and comprehension level in 8th grade. Teachers are forced to pass them. Another issue are parents not being parents and letting their kids do what they want or in another video one girl telling her teacher "my mom said I could beat your ass". Then since funding for schools is entirely based on attendance school administration will not allow you to suspend or expel a student, or if they actually try the parents show up and threaten lawsuits. Alot of these issues are all the parents fault.
Bullcrap.
The bar is too low…in *some* schools.
The bar is too low…in *some* classrooms.
The bar is too low…in some homes.
That’s the truth of the matter. It’s sad, but it’s true.
And the kids who are in the schools, classrooms and homes with HIGH standards, are gonna mop the floor with the kids who are not. And the divide in American will widen.
Yup my daughter goes to public school. The schools that she has attended aren't terrible but they aren't great either. She is in mostly honors classes though, so other than one science class back in middle school, she hasn't had an issue with disruptive behavior in her classes. If we didn't care and push her to do well earlier on, she wouldn't be in those honors classes and her experience would be a lot different.
Similar to my kids except that the school are above average. But the key element has been that we encouraged their achievement and so the kids in their classes (AP and honors) are more serious students.
Because schools aren't allowed to discipline students. They're not allowed to get rid of students with clear behavioral problems.
No education system in the world tolerates the disrespect and disruption students in U.S. public schools get away with.
This is a solvable problem but administrators can't be bullied by accusations of racism when moving forward with reforms, for the past several years - they have been.
The worst part about it is that most kids really do still want to succeed and learn. But we’ve allowed the disruptive kids in school to ruin the experience for everyone.
I understand that even the “troubled” kids need a place to be. But perhaps that place isn’t with the kids that actually want to be there.
I gave my students a survey to start the year. One question: "on a scale of 1-5 (1- not at all, 5 - as much as possible) how much do you want to learn?"
Most common answer? 3
Least common answer? 5 followed by 4
I wish what you said was true in my classes, but sadly it's not. It's the phones. Teachers can't compete with them. Plain and simple.
Why schools still allow phones during class is beyond me. I was part of the first generation of kids to have phones of their own while at school, and only the kids with rich parents had them at the time. We're talking going to school with an absolute brick of a Siemens phone that looked more like one of those satellite phones that you use in the middle of the jungle. Those phones were only for calls and even then they were left with the teacher until class was over. Allowing kids to use smartphones with internet access in class now is extremely counter productive.
This is my thought. I understand the counterargument, what if there is an an emergency, and we need to reach the kid quickly? Well, was there not emergencies before smartphones? I simply don't see why kids absolutely NEED uninterrupted access to TikTok during class hours. Of course there aren't gonna pay attention, there's an entire internet of curated content at their fingertips.
That counter argument is nonsense. Emergencies can and should be handled the same way they were before the advent of the cell phone: call the school, the school goes to your class and grabs you.
I agree, but I can totally envision helicopter parents insisting on 24/7 access to little Billy, lest the district find a nasty lawsuit on their hands.
Schools would have to institute the policy and get signatures probably, but this was never a problem when I went to school. No parent ever sued or so much as complained that they couldn’t get in contact with their child because every parent had the school office number and could call when emergencies happened. The helicopter parent isn’t a new invention there are just a whole lot more of them nowadays.
> I understand the counterargument, what if there is an an emergency, and we need to reach the kid quickly? Well, was there not emergencies before smartphones?
So what, that doesn't mean they need to have the phone out during class. They can have it with them but it stays in their pocket or in their bag until they are on break or such an emergency arises.
We weren't even allowed to have our gameboy in school, let alone a cell phone. Small color flip phones with internet were hitting when I was in highschool but almost no student had one and they certainly didnt allow them in class. A phone these days is 1000x more distracting yet they allow them.
I worked for a district that is as bad as it gets. Whatever horror stories you can think of surrounding schools? I’ve dealt with it. I also worked in alternative placement schools where students had major and scary issues (as you can imagine).
I believe that most students would love some sort of reform and a better learning experience. Even if they don’t know what that looks like. However, I fear that number will drop to a 1 if we can’t show them what school is meant to be.
Who would want to learn if learning meant sitting in a room full of kids that can’t read, a teacher that can’t teach (likely bc there’s way too many kids in there with one hundred accommodations), and peers that fail to show even an iota of respect? It’s just chaotic and exhausting when we let things get too far.
In Norway they banned phones from lots of schools. Have them put their phone into phone lockers.
Honestly though, it's just not the phones. It's lack of interest and engagement in what they're being taught. Maybe they're not interested in the subject or their teacher is teaching them in a really boring way.
I can only speak for myself, but I remember as a kid, all the way through school, even if I couldn't scroll my phone or browse Facebook or play games on my school laptop, I would just doodle and stare into space and zone out and think of more interesting things. The subjects either wasn't interesting to me or the teacher didn't make the subject interesting to engage with. Often though, a really good teacher could manage to get my attention if they were teachers that were engaging. Often this would mean a dialogue between the teacher and us kids. Personally I was a fan of when we would sit in a circle and share our thoughts on a topic. That could be quite engaging, as we weren't just sitting there and passively listening to a lesson.
Our kids aren’t allowed to have their phones out during class.
Like, at all. They get in deep shit if they do. And the kids are still dumb as fuck. The teaching is also horrific. My kid couldn’t even get extra help in math because “if you keep looking at it, it’ll click sooner than later.”
What a way to teach a kid. lol
My GF is a teacher and the school doesn't have a policy on phones. It's supposed to be teachers discretion. But when 70% of the teachers don't care, and the administration refuses to back the 30% who *do* care, it becomes an impossible battle.
I'm mortified by what I hear from teachers and my own kids about how school works these days. And this is in a well-paying affluent school district.
But do they care if they get in trouble? Just saw a video last night where this imbecile slapped his teacher twice because she, gasp, took his vape pen away.
I hate the idea of sending my kids to private school but seriously what other options are there? i can move to a better school district but its still an issue that can be present in elementary/middle or highschool.
Some parents just don't care about their kids and that's on them but why the school system tolerates these kids ruining everyone else's education is just baffling to me.
There are public schools that do not tolerate disrespecting teachers. My daughter is in one. Have to look for them and tour the school while kids are in school.
I was in the same place you are, unfortunately private school was not better. There is a concentration of entitled parents at private schools, and a bunch of those parents have misbehaving kids. Admin gets their hands tied just like in public.
Most of this comes from the administration for most schools and for all districts don’t support teachers. As an example, if a teacher wants to fail a student, admin or even district will step in and tell them the lowest they can give is a C. As a result, kid who did enough work to warrant a 10 gets a 70 and realizes they don’t have to do shit. Also, a long term result of this(assuming said teacher doesn’t just get the hell out of there) is the teacher lowers their standards to deal with the system and keep their job. Both me and my wife went through this exact same scenario when we taught, thankfully we don’t anymore. And this was just on the grading side, it’s worse on the social side, god help a teacher if they actually try to admonish a child for any of the horrors some of them do.
As both former teachers we want to home school our children if that shows the value of modern school now. And it 99% of the time is not the teacher’s fault.
100%. I was a first year teacher during the pandemic and had kids that either did 1% of the work, and came to school 3% of the time, and at the end of the year, after all the threats of “being held back or failing,” admin rolls in and is like, “yeah, they’re all going to 8th grade next year. No problem. No kid ‘can fail’ during a ‘pandemic year.’” It was so awful. And the disruptive ones annihilated any sense of learning or peacefulness that might have existed, and the ones that did their work and read books they brought from home would just look at me with these pleading, devastated eyes, seeing what they and I had to deal with. Teaching was BRUTAL, and probably why I had to peace out at the beginning of my second year.
Teacher here and you are spot on. Although i am in Europe its the same over here. If i was to give a list of issues of the current problems we are facing it is
1. Not allowed to discipline students who are disruptive or dont follow the rules. I currently teach a class where 7/12 students are going to fail the year because they dont bother to show up, dont turn in any work and if they do show themselves they only sit on their phones anyway
2. The parents and to some extent the primary and secondary school system has failed them because they have never faced any consequences for their lazy shit and they are nowhere near the academic level they should be on. If you have 16 and 17 year old who read and write at a 4th grade level then you know there have been more than one fuck up along the way
3. As the clip shows: Take away the fucking phones. For most of them its a irresistable distraction and although they claim "it can help with school" they use it for meaningless brain-rot 99% of the time
As someone who works in public schools, giving kids laptops and iPads was the worst mistake the schools could have made. What's even worse is that schools are trying to justify their purchases by forcing teachers to implement online stuff in their curriculum. No one likes it.
I was shocked when my partner told me all of the elementary school kids at their school were given laptops. Even the kindergarteners. And I just had to ask what could they possibly need it for? The mandated online curriculum learning tools.
If they must be given laptops, they should be given some cheap Linux laptops, and choose a Linux that is so far away from being user friendly. Like, you have to learn command line fu to install entertainment programs on them.
That was my experience working calls for IT in the hotel industry and then late for higher education. You had the older folks not knowing how anything works, the genx/millenials who generally knew, and the young ones who also had no idea how anything works. The benefit to the kids though, they were good listeners when I had to give instructions, older folks were more likely to get upset.
This is truly horrifying to me. My daughter is starting Kindergarten in the Fall. I don’t want her to have a laptop or a tablet at all. I will tell the faculty this. She is only 5 years old!!!
I’m a senior right now. The laptops that they give out are school mandated. Everything you do is recorded and most websites are blocked. There are some ways to get around some of these blocks, but 95% of the time that’s not happening. Your child will be fine. You can also just keep the tablet and hand it out for designated school things, cuz that’s all they can really be used for.
As a waitress, I see tons of parents who've just failed to teach their kids how to not have their faces in their phones 24-7 in general. Little kids all the way up to teenager age nowadays, at least once a day (usually multiple times) I will see kids who *refuse* to look up from their phone or tablet or whatever screen mommy and daddy have given them, to interact with me in any way. Mom and dad will give a weak "stop for a second, give the nice lady your order! Jimmy... Jimmy?" and then just give up when the kid still doesn't look up and give me their order themselves.
Kids will have their face in their screen the *entire* time they're at the restaurant, sometimes they'll stop long enough to eat a bit, sometimes they'll still have the screen on the table next to them while they eat... and mom and dad seem to have given up entirely.
Yes, sometimes adults will be on their phone a bit while waiting for food or whatever as well, but they're pretty much all capable of stopping and interacting properly when I come up, and will put it away to eat and to interact with the person across from them. This is a whole new thing from the younger generation that I've never seen before in my 20 years of serving.
Yep. And then they try to justify it like parents didnt raise their kids without ipads for centuries. Just lazy parents not actually wanting to parent.
OMG If I'm paying for a meal outside of the house we are going to sullenly stare at each other in silence by God. No screens. Not even to verify that fact. You will struggle in the way your forefathers did and sit with the not knowing of things. See something funny? You will have to use expressive language to convey it's hilarity to the rest of us instead of a link. Your friend does not need an play by play of dinner. It's okay, they will survive, I swear.
As a result, my kids know how to carry on a conversation at a table. Who knew?
Honestly, i can't blame this on just the parents.
I had a love of learning my entire life, but the way school turns this love into a requirement and punishes you for not doing it correctly? that's part of the problem. high school broke that love for me and a lot of people because it took wonder and curiosity and turned it into busy work
And when I taught middle school for a decade I was the teacher that nipped that in the bud early. By around 2018 students knew parents and admin could eat out of their hands so they’d say I’m a dick and picking on them and I’d have to have a meeting about my methods (no tech no talking - yknow regular teacher running a functioning classroom stuff) unless we’re using it specifically for a project. I did not have the benefit of the doubt and these kids would hit the transfer portal to the teacher who let them fuck around where they didn’t learn. Our scores were night and day bc I was effective but after COVID I said fuck this and bailed. The power dynamic was something I got sick of putting my finger in the dam about. Too bad bc I liked my career, made great relationships with the kids that bought in, and was good at it.
I ran the ISS room in a high school for a few years. I confiscated their phones first thing upon arrival and that usually set the tone for the day. Most kids gave me the "Yeah, whatever" and handed it over. There were a few who wanted to make it difficult. One kid threatened to "kick your (my) fuckin ass if you think you're getting my phone."
The regular teachers loved me because behavior actually got better and the kids got caught up in their work under my watch. I maxed out on the pay scale at $12.50/hr, despite the district requiring a license to hold the position. That shit wouldn't cover my loans. I quit and haven't looked back.
This is me. Since COVID I have given up. I haven’t lowered my standards but now don’t “bother” anyone not paying attention. The students who want to succeed can do well. The others get what they get. My failure rates are so high other teachers in the school check kids’ grades in my classes first before failing them. If they are failing mine, they feel failing theirs will draw less fire.
A kid told me a year ago: “your class isn’t hard… you just hold us accountable for the work you assign. In other classes if enough people don’t do the work, the teacher will eventually cancel the assignment or give everyone fake grades.”
They aren't, there are no such things as consequences in schools anymore, so students can get away with behavior like this with extremely limited reprecussions.
Why not give them a chance to prove they actually learned the material instead of telling them to kick rocks? Even if it takes a bit of failure to motivate them it’s better late than never
Because the consequences to schools if students fail are too big. Admin/districts pass those heavy consequences on teachers. Teachers change system so “success” now = passing the test.
High stakes standardized tests created a huge, messy, bureaucratic problem and no one knows how to fix it. This is the legacy of Bush’s No Child Left Behind.
i hope this is the first week and they all think they can get away with not paying attention. but this guy sets hard tests and all these idiots fail hard and realize they need to focus to get somewhere in life
They'll fail, then blame the teacher for making it too hard or "not teaching them."
Admin will ask the teacher for documentation about how they're supporting these students, then blame the teacher for not being "engaging" (as if anyone can compete with quick-dopamine machines).
So the teacher will bump student grades up because now it's their job and paycheck on the line.
The kids will go to the next grade; rinse and repeat until they finally get a diploma they can't read.
We're so unwilling to blame kids for anything that they're held accountable for nothing. This is the result.
I wouldn't say this is the norm everywhere, but in the majority of places were massive consumerism push is the standard of human living.
Kids are more distracted than ever these days due to attention overload.
The child that wants to learn will pay attention or at least will find a way to get the information.
We need better motivation long term.
Honestly looks like they're almost done for the day (chairs flipped onto desk to help the custodians clean up easier), and they have a little bit of free or screen time to kill before the bell. Teacher doesn't look mad or disappointed or apathetic at all. He's probably talking to a few of them about something, maybe even going over online class materials. There's lots of things that can be happening here, and we don't know without context. I subbed for 5 years in high schools, 13 seconds in a classroom can look like anything if you preface it with the right caption.
100%. I work in schools and while there are students like this in almost every classroom, 90% of students still show up and do what they're supposed to. It's not too different these days expert it's easier to show shit like this out of context
My plan for when I have kiddos of my own is to give them technology as I received it. TV at 4, desktop home computer with educational games in family room at 5-6, hand held gaming 7-8, console/online gaming 8-9, limited internet access on computer at 9-10, dumb phone at 11-12, and finally smart phone and laptop at 14-15. Kids are addicted to their phones because their parents are, it’s as simple as that.
its because they can give them a phone and the phone parents them. people are just so fucking lazy they cant even be bothered to pay attention to their kids
So I learned from a friend who’s a mom of high schoolers that you basically need a newer phone to attend public school in Florida. She sent her daughter to school and she needed to be able to download like 14 apps including one that is used as a hall pass for the bathroom. Her older iPhone couldn’t accommodate so the teacher asked the class “Is there anyone that will allow SoandSo to use your phone so she can go to the bathroom?” How INSANE is that!? I’m 40 and if there was a phone out, we would have it confiscated until the end of the school year—I never got a cellphone until I graduated and was 18.
Another friend is a professor at a private college—he says that he can tell by the format that his students are all having AI complete their assignments. So they’re literally paying 80k/yr to train AI…. So F’ing scary. At least previously, the rich kids were paying the poor, smart kids to do assignments so that the poor kids would be that much smarter in the workforce. Imagine the trajectory of all of this—and also with all the social media, they have no social skills…
So, to give you an actual answer: most districts run into one of a couple of problems with the phone jail bag things.
First is pretty straightforward: parents dont want them. If a parent needs to get ahold of their kid, most won't even think to call the office, theyll just call their kid. If their kid doesnt answer, and its because a teacher took their phone, I promise you 80% of parents will freak out at the teacher for preventing contact.
Second is liability: If a kid puts their phone into a phone jail, and something happens to it (goes missing, is broken, etc.), then well, chances are the school is on the hook for that. Once it goes in the bag, it becomes the school's responsibility, and one of THE overriding concerns of schools these days is to avoid getting sued at all costs.
Third is buy-in: You have to have every single student without exception buy in. If one or two students are exempt- even if its totally reasonable!- then every student that sees them will wonder "what makes THEM so special? Why cant I have MY phone?" And even though I will champion the genuine intelligence of teens and adolescents, their emotional regulation and reasoning usually isnt fully developed, and even if they LOGICALLY know there is a good reason, its hard to just logic away the FEELINGS of unfairness, which often leads to kids bucking the rules (again, its not that kids these days are especially rebellious. Its just the tendency of youth to push back against perceived injustice even if it makes some adults roll their eyes), and at a certain point as a teacher, you just have better things to do than fight that fight.
And all of this is ignoring a HUGE factor: Cost. Lots of districts are pretty strapped for cash. This stuff costs money, and not every district can afford it, so that money will go somewhere else first (granted misappropriation of educational funding is insane, but thats a rant for a different thread)
All in all, for most districts, its just not worth the headache
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High school teacher here. On test days, I have a hanging shoe rack with each of my kids’ names on a sleeve. I tell them, “Please put your devices in the sleeves and then you can have your test. When you hand in your test, you can have your device back. If you don’t put your phone in the sleeve, your test will be a 0” At the beginning of the year they also helped create our classroom rules and norms, and agreed to do this. Out of 28 kids, maybe 10 actually do it. The other 18 get 0s. Then I get angry emails from parents about their kids getting “tyrannical grades” on their tests. Then the cycle continues
Dude, if I got caught on my phone in hs (less than 10 years ago), it would be confiscated and my mum would have had to come and get it. It’s crazy how quickly that’s changed.
15-20ish years for me and if my phone even RANG I would get it confiscated lol. Had to go get it in the office after school.
Bro same, we would get a suspension in middle school if we even had our phone on our person. They literally only texted then though and it cost 10¢/msg
Man... Memory unlocked. Kids these days have it so easy, unlimited everything basically... 🤣 I miss my green-screen phone, it's weeklong battery & basically indestructible self...
And never hit the internet button
That was the worst  cus it was like right in the middle or next to the end button. *Accidentally turns on Internet* Nooooo...off! Off! Off!
The way I would start trying to turn my entire phone off immediately after accidentally hitting the internet button
I taught high school for a while (been out of the classroom since 2013. Managing phones was a nightmare. We used to confiscate and take to the office, then parent had to get it after school. Parents were awful. Lots of accusations about “damaging” the phones. So we got a bunch of paper bags donated and if they were caught with their phone, they had to drop it in the bag and we’d stapled it closed and it sat on the desk. Never left their sight but they couldn’t use it.
I had my digital watch confiscated in ~’06 for beeping for half a second on the full hour lmao
Yeah I'm a full fledged millenial, who is not so far removed from school, and the fact that these kids get to just blatantly be on their phones during class is so absurd to me. I understand HAVING a phone on you "in case of emergency" but there is literally zero reason they need to actively be on it during class. This is an absolute joke that teachers can't confiscate phones or punish kids for using it during class.
Graduated in 07 and would have my phone snatched!!!!
Millennial grad here, and *to this day,* I *still* have a habit of texting/looking at my phone under the table or otherwise out of sight, for as little time as possible, when with other people. It was so hammered into us that phone use was unacceptable!
I mean, that's generally the *polite* thing to do. Millennial here as well, and it drives me insane when younger coworkers just pull their phones out mid conversation as if we're not actively talking to each other
Same 🤣🤣 no fear like having your phone taken away in class
Yes. We don’t *actually* want to fix the problems. I just had this discussion with my admin. It was about sleeping in class, but same with phones. After addressing any health or home life situation, if it’s determined that it’s just poor behavior choices by the student, we immediately call to have their parents pick them up. We don’t even have very involved parents, but these behaviors would end REAL fucking quick if parents start having to leave work to deal with such stupidity.
Most issues would end real quick if parents were actually involved. Our culture/society is in decay.
so for a lot of parents how much time do they have with there kids i mean i see this with my sister with her kid. that kid spends first all day from 8:30-16h at school then from 16h to 18h in afterschool care and the she picks her up . dad works shifts so he home around 22:30 in the evening when he has the late shift if he has the early shift he picks her up 16h after school. but a lot of the time he ends up getting the late shift because suprise suprise everbody wants the early shift to pick up there kids and the single parents take those most with counting for extra curriclars like she's does judo,dancing and our country version of girlscouts, they pretty much see there kid 3hrs a day on average on weekdays and more on weekends... and this is a stable income couple so there not taking extra jobs just having 2 fulltime employment jobs but a lot of people need to do sidehustles to make ends meet and where wondering why kids arent being raised properly anymore? when the hell are parents supposed be raising there kids when there constantly working. this also causes a lot of guilt feeling at the parents so when they do see there kids they want to have happy times not feeling like there constantly punishing there kids for there school behaviour so it becomes a vicious cycles aswel its why with my partner we already decided that she will be cutting back on her hours when we have kids. I would like to also cut back on my hrs but i make more money and we would become fincially unstable if i did and no longer be able to pay our morgage
The biggest issue is my mom would show up and whip my ass Now moms and dads get mad at the school. It’s so fucking pathetic.
The other big thing is that phones also got really expensive. Like, it was one thing to confiscate a kid's phone when it was worth maybe $100. You'd feel significantly less comfortable confiscating a device worth up to (or more than!) $1000, knowing that, depending on your administration, you could be hung out to dry for any scratch or crack on the screen. Also, parents today can be very shirty about confiscated phones: "she's needs her phone so I know that she gets home safe!"
I mean, iPhones were easily $600 when I was in school, so myself and my classmates definitely had pricey devices. I also went to a school out of area, so I had a 20-25 minute drive to get there, never mind back when I rode the bus. They just didn’t have any patience for kids being on phones during class, which is such a low bar it’s crazy it’s come to this. The irony is, I had T-Mobile, which had nearly no coverage near my school, so I couldn’t even use my phone once I got there. Not that I would have though, since there weren’t the sort of apps available that kids would have used like today. Best we had was clash of clans!
We had the app where your phone looked like a beer and you could tip it back and drink it. And one that made your phone look like a zjppo lighter.
Oh hell yeah! I had those on my iPod touch, plus the original flashlight one.
I had the iPod touch before it even had an App Store lol had to jailbreak it to play tap tap revolution
Back when it was just your screen made all white, turned up to max brightness. I had an iPod touch back when I first started smoking weed my first year out of highschool. I got tricked by an app claiming that it could use the phones touch sensors to weigh things and thought I could use it to make sure I wasn't being undersold.😑
Doodle jump. Doodle jump. Doodle jump.
They were always expensive with cheaper options..
I truly don't understand why that isn't the rule anymore? It's not that difficult to keep your phones on silent and put up in your bookbag during class
In think I might have had to fist fight my mom if I got a zero because I couldn’t turn my phone in. She would have been big mad
Only 10?! That fucking blows my mind. Teens have that much separation anxiety from their phone?
Don't forget that most of these teens grew up with phones and tablets in their faces... It's hard to break a habit that they've had their entire lives.. A habit that they see as "normal". Let's take your typical 16 year old high school junior. They were born in 2008. The first iphone debuted in 2007. By the time they hit age 3 in 2011, the iPhone 4 was popular, and so was the Samsung Galaxy S2. The first gen ipad was released in 2010. Current high school students don't know of a time prior to online gaming, smartphone apps, and instant gratification. Those kids were alsoo already born in the youtube and video streaming, and social media era as well.
No doubt, but there isn’t much I can say about the obvious breach of academic integrity that comes with having a mini computer in your hand and earbuds in during an assessment. 1/4 of my time grading assignments is being a detective trying to find out who used chatGPT to write their programs to begin with. Having a test in the classroom is one of the few times I have complete control over testing their comprehension of what we learn in class.
I'm sorry teaching has become so difficult over the last 10 years. I'm in my early 30s. I still carried change in my pocket to use a payphone. I didn't have social media until I was in my late teens, and my first cell phone required an "unlimited texting" add-on plan. These kids don't realize the long-term damage they're causing .
Thank you for the flashback of “unlimited talk and text for 9.99/mo”! Hahaha But it’s not all bad, this is just one story from one classroom during one school year. A lot of great things happen in my room and school every week. Were undoubtedly in a strange time in terms of education, accountability for students and educators, priorities, generational differences in parents, yadda yadda
“10-10-220!”
The kids can’t possibly realize the long term damage they’re causing; their brains simply aren’t developed enough yet and an addiction is an addiction no matter what it is. I blame the parents, as well as society at large for letting this become the norm. My kids are 4 months old and I really hope for some kind of social overhaul regarding smartphones and kids so that I don’t have to fight it. I will though, because this is unacceptable and if I put the phones/tablets in their hands then that’s on me.
It's crazy that i'm not even 30 yet, and we only ever used a pen and paper. A computer could be accessed in the IT area of the school, but it was only meant for specific classes, and even then it was an "occasion". It all happened so fast.
Don’t forget the part where there was a world wide plague and kids lived through their phone entirely for a year. My brother is a teacher and says people constantly underestimate how the plague fucked kids up
This right here. There was a 2-3 year period where the developmental process for most kids severely slowed down. Those kids lost 2-3 years of communicating and interacting with other kids. However, tech was already a problem prior to the pandemic.
It's not a habit, they're addicted and it's by design. Silicon valley designed these phones to keep people as addicted as possible. I'm nearly 28. The year that smartphones started really being something that everyone owned was about 2013. I was a junior/senior in high school and distinctly remember when most people started pulling them out of their pockets. It's wild to me to think that people born now 12 years after me are sophomores in high school.
There’s a whole documentary about how former silicone valley experts won’t let their kids have phones because of how damaging it is. ETA: it’s called the Social Dilemma and is more about social media and how bad it is for everyone, especially kids.
We're going to look back at this as similar to designer drug addiction. If we make it out.
“Hard”… one of the things about school is that you can’t do every day things. Phones should get locked away during lessons, period. That’s crazy that they’re even involved in class. Everything about this classroom looks wrong. Why are there still upside down chairs on the tables during a lesson? I feel like there’s just not a standard being set to actually adhere to.
Yeah. When I was in high school a good 10 years ago, we were not allowed to bring our phones to school. If a teacher found out you had it with you it was immediately confiscated. I find it insane that they allow them in the classroom now. Kids can go without a phone for 6 hours.
Lack of discipline due to parents who don't give a fuck.
My wife teaches elementary and has a student who has missed over 50 days of school. They throw a tantrum at home so they can stay home and play video games. How the state hasn’t stepped in yet is nuts.
Wowwwww. My kiddo missed quite a few days, he has type 1 diabetes and when he gets a minor cold, it can be complicated. That's besides the normal diabetes issues that occasionally pop up. His ass got "BECCA" billed, I guess it happens if your kid misses more than 10 days in a year or 5 in a month. It was easily explained and dropped (husband and my fault for not using the website to input absences vs sending a written note). I'm amazed 50 days isn't leading to some serious intervention.
The school has offered mental health resources, including a facility where the student can get help and learn in a more suitable environment but the parents won’t go through with it and the school can’t force them.
Teens?? My gf teaches elementary and it’s just as bad
Where are they letting elementary school kids have phones in class?
A lot of schools, honestly. Parents freak out when schools try to mandate a no-phone policy. (Not all of them, obviously, but often it's enough of them to make sure that policy never happens.)
That must be a US thing. I'm on the other side of the pond and I only know one kid in my son's 3rd grade class with a phone, and it's definitely not allowed to be out anywhere on school grounds. Not even an old Nokia. I guess for safety reasons it's appealing.
It definitely could be a US thing. I'll add that it actually makes safety worse. Not long ago, a fire started sin the school I teach at. Since everyone texted their parents as soon as the alarms went off, all of their parents showed up to get them... Meaning that it took the fire engines almost 30 minutes to actually make it to the school in all of the traffic. And then they had to try to move the parents' cars from where the engines needed to be.
Oof yeah. I remember back in 99 right at the end of the school year my science teacher went to demonstrate the power of Acetylene (a welding gas), telling us it was "very energetic" when ignited. He filled a huge balloon with it like 16" diameter, tied it to a yardstick and held it over the Bunsen burner. HUGE boom. Black smoke covering the ceiling. This was weeks after Columbine so the administration was on edge a bit, and after evacuating the school and getting the ok from the fire department we went back to the lab, and they just told him to please not do it again. Most parents didn't hear about it until dinner. Very different times.
it's what happens when parents decide to use an ipad to raise their kids in place of themselves
Yeah man, I'm an old school parent. I let a Super Nintendo raise my kids.
It's clearly changed, though. We got a Playstation at one point and my neighbor had an N64. But we still mostly played outside. That was more of a rainy day thing for us. We just legitimately preferred hockey in the street and riding bikes.
It could be a lot of things; Separation anxiety, obstinacy, apathy for grades, lack of foresight. I just know I’d rather give them a choice rather than pick a fight. They are cognizant enough to appreciate the consequences of something as simple as a test grade.
i thought this was going to be a story about hope. You really had me feeling it lol
I do have plenty of those stories too! Haha It’s definitely not all doom and gloom and me yelling at clouds. Just the other day one of my students got a scholarship to a school they otherwise would never be able to afford going to for Esports! They’re going to be playing on the school’s Overwatch 2 team. This kid struggles in almost everything academically due to dyslexia but they’ve found a path forward through their love and talent in the game.
idk if that's really a lot less doom and gloom lmao
Also a high school teacher. I feel your pain. Kids straight up would rather fail and have their devices than challenge themselves and grow. It’s exceedingly disheartening, and scenes like the one in this video make me feel bad for the kids who care and want to learn. I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for them. As far as parents go, the way they respond to your rule says it all. Instead of tearing their own kid a new one for making the decision to fail, they blame you. The current generation are fucked because the parents are fucked.
Why are school administrators so spineless? Can I become a principal and tell these parents to fuck off or would that get me fired?
The admins can only have as much spine as the school boards allow them.
Omg really? I remember we had a similar rule with one of my teachers pre2010. He had the cellphone box. Everyone puts their phone in the box *daily*. On silent, specifically. If your phone goes off and it's with you at your desk, you get in trouble (whether it was demanding it in the box with light reprimanding or detention if it's a consistent issue - never really got that far). However, if your phone goes off in the box, he just asks you to turn off the ringer - unless it's actually a call. If a call goes off and it's in the box, he has permission to *answer the call*. One time, and only once in my time in that class, a kid's phone rang in the box. Teacher answered it, hilariously of course. He ended up handing the phone to the dude, because it was his mom calling to excitedly tell him that he got into his choice college. It was both hilarious and adorable
The parents who complain are wild. Aside from not being happy about their child's failing grade, even though their child was fully responsible for that, I'm guessing they want the phone on kiddo at all times so the lifeline isn't cut? They need to stop helicoptering their kids, they'll be fine without 24/7 phone access just as those parents were fine when their parents couldn't reach them back in the 80s or 90s.
Wait, they just don't bother to take the test even?
Correct, they will choose to sit on their phones, sleep, or do work for another class in some cases
Good job. You’ve set some BASIC rules and guidelines to help them succeed, and they can’t bother to have an ounce of discipline. Their loss. Their parents failed.
Yeah if you’re a parent and you bitch at the teacher for taking your kids phone during class instead of bitching at your kid for knowing better, yeah you failed
And of course the parents are all not my child It's your fault. Yeah that's bullshit You know the rules you choose to break them
I would be careful about how the shoe rack is monitored, my brother had his laptop stolen in college because the professor made them put all their bags in a corner and someone just took it
This is a good point, and that’s a nightmare what happened to your brother! I’ll keep this in mind when it’s time for everyone to collect their devices again.
This is my life as a professor. My students are checked out.
So do they fail your class?
Yes, many of them do.
What does the dean say?
"I'm really enjoying my pay that all these tuition hikes have afforded me"
The most accurate comment here.
Free money!
One of my deans is sympathetic. The other encourages endless “empathy and understanding,” letting students turn their work in whenever.
One of my favorite things to hear from an admin. Just let your class of 300 turn in late work and take make up exams whenever they can. Yeah, ok. I have endless time. No need to get back to my family or have a life, let alone hold any of these young adults accountable.
Gross. I teach dual enrollment in high school and I keep emphasizing to students that their professors won't be giving them extensions or holding their hands.
As a senior in a dual enrolled high-school program, the teachers that say this are at least twice as "difficult" as a regular CC professor. They care more, and it shows.
As a TA, no they don't fail. If too many kids fail, then it makes you look bad, and then you make *your* professor look bad. I had to pass two students who either failed or didn't take the midterm and final. Not to sound like a boomer, but if I had failed midterms and finals, I would have never passed. But they get points just for showing up and taking open book online quizzes, so that amounts to enough for a C. The entire goal then becomes to entertain them enough that they don't go on their phones. The onus is on the faculty to do more and more and more for the same shitty wage. Everything revolves around activities, games, "participation." Apparently lecturing makes you a shitty instructor now. But for a full time grad student with another job and a thesis to write, I don't have time to come up with new little activities to coddle 20 year olds every week. Especially when my own professor is completely checked out in terms of teaching us anything about teaching. Education is the last thing universities are concerned with anyway. I've decided not to go into academia. It's a fucking shitshow. The entire thing disgusts me.
I was a TA for a capstone senior design course at a top-15 university. We had a kid that literally didn’t show up to anything besides the first day intro. The other TA and I had to beg the professor to give him a C+ instead of a B+. It’s all a total joke.
I watched someone copy and paste an entire online quiz top to bottom, paste it into ChatGPT, and get 100%.
I suspect that grade inflation is more rampant at top schools than it is at an average institution.
I’m recently back to school after some years working and it’s insane. I was never a star student but just having a notebook open and actually listening puts me at the top of a lot of my classes. The students had the nerve to tell one of the teachers the final he’s giving us a study guide for is too much. It’s a capstone course that I’m the only person that has more than a 50% attendance rate. Like my man you made your bed you’ve been to 3 classes yeah you got a lot to study.
I’ve had a very similar experience, went back to school at 37. People (17-22) just straight up never go to class or miss weeks at a time, open up their laptops and just ignore the professor, same with their phones. I end up answering 90% of the questions in all my classes because literally no one raises their hands or attempts to answer questions from the teacher, no one interacts in class or speaks to anyone unless they already know each other, it’s pretty shitty and it’s 100% on the students.
I quit teaching uni because they were putting me on all online classes. Nothing more heart breaking than watching the cameras turn off one by one. Dean wouldn’t let me enforce it with grade deductions because “some students may not have the ability to afford a laptop with a camera” or some BS, despite the fact that we’re charging the same and the kids are learning less.
>Nothing more heart breaking than watching the cameras turn off one by one. If it makes you feel better, when I'm in online classes I turn my camera off whenever allowed but I'm still listening/taking notes. It's just id prefer to be in pajamas chilling vs on camera and formal.
I worked from home for years. I would NEVER have my camera on. Also funny how little of this discussion asks whether the kids could pass the test. Almost like school is teaching kids how to do busy work and not learn shit. ... Oh, yeah, that's what 20 years of schooling in the hands of private think tanks and billionaires achieved. Imagine that... (Pointing out how many of the "solutions" in this thread actually caused all these problems in the first place.) [Here's](https://apnews.com/article/a4042e82ffaa4a34b50ceac464761957) an Associated Press story about how Bill Gates personally fucked with public schools for two decades. And [here's](https://philanthropydaily.com/gates-philanthropy-failure-common-core/) the autopsy. And [here's](https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/campaign-to-sabotage-texas-public-schools/) new attempts to do the exact same thing in Texas all over again. Public education is being sabotaged on purpose and the people doing it are using their own failures to convince people to give them even more power.
To be fair, I was a student during the COVID online classes and it helped me immensely. I don't know why, but having the ability to do other things at the same time made it easier for me to concentrate. Drawing for example helps me focus on what people are saying, even though it might look like I'm not paying attention. I can't speak for all students obviously, but I would assume that a lot of the older Gen Z students that graduated high school before COVID actually paid attention.
Good job security for me as an older millennial. Life will smack them in the face sooner or later. Not your problem.
That’s insane to me. I would kill to go back to school. I cannot for the life of me imagine wasting that much money just to dick around in public. Positive side, maybe the job market will have less competition with the lower number of grads ?
Are students allowed to have phones out during class now?
Yeah with all the laptops, phones, headphones, half empty desks and chairs stacked on the half empty desks - it looks like an after school/detention situation
That or like study hall and the teacher is just talking to himself or telling ppl to have a great weekend. There’s little context here.
And...... who is recording and why? Is it to add the unrelated text and upload for likes?
social media has exploded with the trend of constantly misleading people and staging scenarios for likes and engagement - it doesn't matter if the context is a complete lie, only likes and comments matter. I'm patiently waiting for the stupid trend to die down and for society to learn to stop liking that crap. Too many idiots always in the comments "what does it matter if it was fake?! I thought it was funny / I liked the message"... yeah, and gullible idiots are happy because they don't even realize they are stupid, but that isn't something to be proud of.
It’s not gonna die. This is gonna be our version of the “Nigerian Prince scam”. It’ll finally die away when enough people younger than us stop falling for it, and then something else will pop up. On the plus side, maybe more and more people will get better and better at critical thinking because of it
Yeah, what I was thinking. No reason to completely kill the volume unless maybe it was pretty obvious he wasn't teaching, just making some obligatory announcement.
Replacing the sound with music raises some questions too.
That makes more sense
My money would be an online class, theyre all viewing same content with some instructions on reaching it
I work at a school with NO cell phone policy. It blows my mind. Im a cell phone baby sitter and it just drives a rift between myself and the kids.
I had a phone with a sliding keyboard when I was in high school. A couple of kids maybe had an iPhone 3g. I can only imagine what its like now in schools with every single kid having a smart phone.
And a smart watch
My kids' phones don't turn on until a certain point of the day. They can make emergency calls but not play games/surf/text, etc. I've seen people letting 10-year-olds take full on cell phones into class. Bonkers.
Bless you - seriously, I think a big difference in kids coming up will be those who parents kinda helped them monitor when and what kind of phone use is appropriate, verse just free control of a phone at any age.
District I used to sub at wouldn't let you do anything but call the parents if a student was using it/had it in their hand. They take them out knowing they cannot be taken away by force.
The parents are to blame. One Karen bitching their kid had their phone taken away and threatening to take it to the superintendent or further is enough to ruin it for everyone. A large portion of people who have kids really shouldn't. People don't know how to parent and think their job is to defend their kid at every turn...that's not what parenting is.
No, but then the teachers take it away and get physically assaulted with no reprocussions
This is exactly what happened to me, and it's why I quit teaching. I took a student's phone away, turned to go lock it in my desk, and the student threw his chair at me while my back was turned (while i was 8 months pregnant no less). My admin literally wanted me to wait another hour and a half to get medical attention, because "they had no one to cover my class". I called an ambulance myself and left, so the principal had to cover my class and the parent literally tried to argue that I had it coming for taking his phone. They had no remorse. I needed stitches in the back of my head, and I got a concussion. My admin then had the audacity to try to pressure me not to press charges on the student in question. I got all the usual lines "You'll ruin his life", "He's just a kid, he didn't mean to", "there will be serious consequences for him already, he will be punished enough". I resigned my position the next day on the grounds of the school not providing a reasonable expectation of a safe working environment. In the week that followed, all that happened to said student was he received a 3 day suspension. I pressed charges on the student, and they charged him (as a juvenile) with assault with a deadly weapon. That was 3 years ago. I still have not returned to classroom teaching despite having 7 years of teaching my own class + a year of student teaching, and a masters in education. Instead, last year I went back to school and became a lactation consultant. Now I teach prenatal classes to expecting moms and new moms in the hospital how to feed their babies. I make 2.5x the pay, easily. I have normal work hours, no work outside of my contract hours, excellent benefits, and i dont get assaulted. America needs education and cultral reform immediately, or they won't have any teachers left.
This is a winning story. You took control and found great success. Much more earning potential as you grow in your career too. Irony is that the school systems need smart and capable teachers like you to help kids grow and succeed but the lack of accountability that is expected from the kids from both school administrators and their parents prevents the loyalty and sacrifice needed to have good teachers hang around.
Thank you! I'm really happy in my new job 😊 I still get to teach, and working with new parents during a really stressful time in their lives is rewarding in a similar way. I miss some parts of teaching kids, but things in my life are so much less stressful now. I don't come home emotionally drained every day, and my time off is actually my time instead of planning for work, so that's nice! It does make me pretty sad to see the state of things and the direction we are going even further towards, though. I think until standards all around are both raised and enforced, and the current socio-cultural challenges are overcome, children in our country don't stand a chance, and neither do we. I just hope people wake up and think about what the future in the US will look like without teachers. Since I've resigned, about 50% of all of the colleagues I knew and worked with have retired or quit for various reasons related to burnout and student/parent behavior.
The rage I feel at this is crazy high.
How awful. It sounds like you are OK and have a much better career path now. I'm also a former teacher and I'm so tired of these stories! It makes me so sad. Good luck to you.
It should not be the responsibility of the teacher to take it away. They can ask for it but if the student refuses, you send them to the principal's office.
Then they refuse that. Then you gotta send the student resource officer in, where other kids can take an out of context clip of the kid being detained, and call it fascism lmao We’re cooked
I think it depends on the school. My daughter is in middle school and they can carry their phones but they need to go in a box in the front of the room during class. Of course some kids don't do this but they're disciplined if they're caught with their phones in class. They're only allowed to use them in "green zones" like hallways and the cafeteria.
Admittedly this was a few years ago now but when I was in HS we'd reached the point already where everyone had a smartphone and we didn't have anything complicated like this. Everyone had a phone on them and they...just weren't allowed to use it in class. Only a couple little shits refused to comply.
"The problem with education isn't setting the bar too high and failing. It's the opposite. It's setting the bar too low and succeeding." Sir Ken Robinson, Phd Ed.
Yeah watched a video the other day about teachers and what they deal with. Kids with 3rd grade reading and comprehension level in 8th grade. Teachers are forced to pass them. Another issue are parents not being parents and letting their kids do what they want or in another video one girl telling her teacher "my mom said I could beat your ass". Then since funding for schools is entirely based on attendance school administration will not allow you to suspend or expel a student, or if they actually try the parents show up and threaten lawsuits. Alot of these issues are all the parents fault.
The bar is on the floor in America… and we still fail.
Bullcrap. The bar is too low…in *some* schools. The bar is too low…in *some* classrooms. The bar is too low…in some homes. That’s the truth of the matter. It’s sad, but it’s true. And the kids who are in the schools, classrooms and homes with HIGH standards, are gonna mop the floor with the kids who are not. And the divide in American will widen.
Yup my daughter goes to public school. The schools that she has attended aren't terrible but they aren't great either. She is in mostly honors classes though, so other than one science class back in middle school, she hasn't had an issue with disruptive behavior in her classes. If we didn't care and push her to do well earlier on, she wouldn't be in those honors classes and her experience would be a lot different.
Similar to my kids except that the school are above average. But the key element has been that we encouraged their achievement and so the kids in their classes (AP and honors) are more serious students.
Because schools aren't allowed to discipline students. They're not allowed to get rid of students with clear behavioral problems. No education system in the world tolerates the disrespect and disruption students in U.S. public schools get away with. This is a solvable problem but administrators can't be bullied by accusations of racism when moving forward with reforms, for the past several years - they have been.
The worst part about it is that most kids really do still want to succeed and learn. But we’ve allowed the disruptive kids in school to ruin the experience for everyone. I understand that even the “troubled” kids need a place to be. But perhaps that place isn’t with the kids that actually want to be there.
I gave my students a survey to start the year. One question: "on a scale of 1-5 (1- not at all, 5 - as much as possible) how much do you want to learn?" Most common answer? 3 Least common answer? 5 followed by 4 I wish what you said was true in my classes, but sadly it's not. It's the phones. Teachers can't compete with them. Plain and simple.
Why schools still allow phones during class is beyond me. I was part of the first generation of kids to have phones of their own while at school, and only the kids with rich parents had them at the time. We're talking going to school with an absolute brick of a Siemens phone that looked more like one of those satellite phones that you use in the middle of the jungle. Those phones were only for calls and even then they were left with the teacher until class was over. Allowing kids to use smartphones with internet access in class now is extremely counter productive.
This is my thought. I understand the counterargument, what if there is an an emergency, and we need to reach the kid quickly? Well, was there not emergencies before smartphones? I simply don't see why kids absolutely NEED uninterrupted access to TikTok during class hours. Of course there aren't gonna pay attention, there's an entire internet of curated content at their fingertips.
That counter argument is nonsense. Emergencies can and should be handled the same way they were before the advent of the cell phone: call the school, the school goes to your class and grabs you.
I agree, but I can totally envision helicopter parents insisting on 24/7 access to little Billy, lest the district find a nasty lawsuit on their hands.
Schools would have to institute the policy and get signatures probably, but this was never a problem when I went to school. No parent ever sued or so much as complained that they couldn’t get in contact with their child because every parent had the school office number and could call when emergencies happened. The helicopter parent isn’t a new invention there are just a whole lot more of them nowadays.
> I understand the counterargument, what if there is an an emergency, and we need to reach the kid quickly? Well, was there not emergencies before smartphones? So what, that doesn't mean they need to have the phone out during class. They can have it with them but it stays in their pocket or in their bag until they are on break or such an emergency arises.
We weren't even allowed to have our gameboy in school, let alone a cell phone. Small color flip phones with internet were hitting when I was in highschool but almost no student had one and they certainly didnt allow them in class. A phone these days is 1000x more distracting yet they allow them.
I worked for a district that is as bad as it gets. Whatever horror stories you can think of surrounding schools? I’ve dealt with it. I also worked in alternative placement schools where students had major and scary issues (as you can imagine). I believe that most students would love some sort of reform and a better learning experience. Even if they don’t know what that looks like. However, I fear that number will drop to a 1 if we can’t show them what school is meant to be. Who would want to learn if learning meant sitting in a room full of kids that can’t read, a teacher that can’t teach (likely bc there’s way too many kids in there with one hundred accommodations), and peers that fail to show even an iota of respect? It’s just chaotic and exhausting when we let things get too far.
In Norway they banned phones from lots of schools. Have them put their phone into phone lockers. Honestly though, it's just not the phones. It's lack of interest and engagement in what they're being taught. Maybe they're not interested in the subject or their teacher is teaching them in a really boring way. I can only speak for myself, but I remember as a kid, all the way through school, even if I couldn't scroll my phone or browse Facebook or play games on my school laptop, I would just doodle and stare into space and zone out and think of more interesting things. The subjects either wasn't interesting to me or the teacher didn't make the subject interesting to engage with. Often though, a really good teacher could manage to get my attention if they were teachers that were engaging. Often this would mean a dialogue between the teacher and us kids. Personally I was a fan of when we would sit in a circle and share our thoughts on a topic. That could be quite engaging, as we weren't just sitting there and passively listening to a lesson.
Our kids aren’t allowed to have their phones out during class. Like, at all. They get in deep shit if they do. And the kids are still dumb as fuck. The teaching is also horrific. My kid couldn’t even get extra help in math because “if you keep looking at it, it’ll click sooner than later.” What a way to teach a kid. lol
My GF is a teacher and the school doesn't have a policy on phones. It's supposed to be teachers discretion. But when 70% of the teachers don't care, and the administration refuses to back the 30% who *do* care, it becomes an impossible battle. I'm mortified by what I hear from teachers and my own kids about how school works these days. And this is in a well-paying affluent school district.
But do they care if they get in trouble? Just saw a video last night where this imbecile slapped his teacher twice because she, gasp, took his vape pen away.
I hate the idea of sending my kids to private school but seriously what other options are there? i can move to a better school district but its still an issue that can be present in elementary/middle or highschool. Some parents just don't care about their kids and that's on them but why the school system tolerates these kids ruining everyone else's education is just baffling to me.
There are public schools that do not tolerate disrespecting teachers. My daughter is in one. Have to look for them and tour the school while kids are in school.
I was in the same place you are, unfortunately private school was not better. There is a concentration of entitled parents at private schools, and a bunch of those parents have misbehaving kids. Admin gets their hands tied just like in public.
Most of this comes from the administration for most schools and for all districts don’t support teachers. As an example, if a teacher wants to fail a student, admin or even district will step in and tell them the lowest they can give is a C. As a result, kid who did enough work to warrant a 10 gets a 70 and realizes they don’t have to do shit. Also, a long term result of this(assuming said teacher doesn’t just get the hell out of there) is the teacher lowers their standards to deal with the system and keep their job. Both me and my wife went through this exact same scenario when we taught, thankfully we don’t anymore. And this was just on the grading side, it’s worse on the social side, god help a teacher if they actually try to admonish a child for any of the horrors some of them do. As both former teachers we want to home school our children if that shows the value of modern school now. And it 99% of the time is not the teacher’s fault.
100%. I was a first year teacher during the pandemic and had kids that either did 1% of the work, and came to school 3% of the time, and at the end of the year, after all the threats of “being held back or failing,” admin rolls in and is like, “yeah, they’re all going to 8th grade next year. No problem. No kid ‘can fail’ during a ‘pandemic year.’” It was so awful. And the disruptive ones annihilated any sense of learning or peacefulness that might have existed, and the ones that did their work and read books they brought from home would just look at me with these pleading, devastated eyes, seeing what they and I had to deal with. Teaching was BRUTAL, and probably why I had to peace out at the beginning of my second year.
Teacher here and you are spot on. Although i am in Europe its the same over here. If i was to give a list of issues of the current problems we are facing it is 1. Not allowed to discipline students who are disruptive or dont follow the rules. I currently teach a class where 7/12 students are going to fail the year because they dont bother to show up, dont turn in any work and if they do show themselves they only sit on their phones anyway 2. The parents and to some extent the primary and secondary school system has failed them because they have never faced any consequences for their lazy shit and they are nowhere near the academic level they should be on. If you have 16 and 17 year old who read and write at a 4th grade level then you know there have been more than one fuck up along the way 3. As the clip shows: Take away the fucking phones. For most of them its a irresistable distraction and although they claim "it can help with school" they use it for meaningless brain-rot 99% of the time
Teachers have gotten assaulted for confiscating phones. Parents have raised hell over teachers confiscating phones. Hands are tied.
As someone who works in public schools, giving kids laptops and iPads was the worst mistake the schools could have made. What's even worse is that schools are trying to justify their purchases by forcing teachers to implement online stuff in their curriculum. No one likes it.
I was shocked when my partner told me all of the elementary school kids at their school were given laptops. Even the kindergarteners. And I just had to ask what could they possibly need it for? The mandated online curriculum learning tools.
If they must be given laptops, they should be given some cheap Linux laptops, and choose a Linux that is so far away from being user friendly. Like, you have to learn command line fu to install entertainment programs on them.
I think the most common laptop these days is a chromebook. Which is honestly terrible for computer literacy because its basically a mobile/tablet OS.
Partly explains why so many Gen Z are basically incapable of solving computer problems on their own, just like the boomers before us.
That was my experience working calls for IT in the hotel industry and then late for higher education. You had the older folks not knowing how anything works, the genx/millenials who generally knew, and the young ones who also had no idea how anything works. The benefit to the kids though, they were good listeners when I had to give instructions, older folks were more likely to get upset.
This is truly horrifying to me. My daughter is starting Kindergarten in the Fall. I don’t want her to have a laptop or a tablet at all. I will tell the faculty this. She is only 5 years old!!!
I’m a senior right now. The laptops that they give out are school mandated. Everything you do is recorded and most websites are blocked. There are some ways to get around some of these blocks, but 95% of the time that’s not happening. Your child will be fine. You can also just keep the tablet and hand it out for designated school things, cuz that’s all they can really be used for.
Parents: if you don’t ignite the will to learn in your babies how do you expect them to want to excel in school?
As a waitress, I see tons of parents who've just failed to teach their kids how to not have their faces in their phones 24-7 in general. Little kids all the way up to teenager age nowadays, at least once a day (usually multiple times) I will see kids who *refuse* to look up from their phone or tablet or whatever screen mommy and daddy have given them, to interact with me in any way. Mom and dad will give a weak "stop for a second, give the nice lady your order! Jimmy... Jimmy?" and then just give up when the kid still doesn't look up and give me their order themselves. Kids will have their face in their screen the *entire* time they're at the restaurant, sometimes they'll stop long enough to eat a bit, sometimes they'll still have the screen on the table next to them while they eat... and mom and dad seem to have given up entirely. Yes, sometimes adults will be on their phone a bit while waiting for food or whatever as well, but they're pretty much all capable of stopping and interacting properly when I come up, and will put it away to eat and to interact with the person across from them. This is a whole new thing from the younger generation that I've never seen before in my 20 years of serving.
it blows my mind that people buy internet connected smart devices for their children. Almost the same as handing them crack cocaine.
Yep. And then they try to justify it like parents didnt raise their kids without ipads for centuries. Just lazy parents not actually wanting to parent.
OMG If I'm paying for a meal outside of the house we are going to sullenly stare at each other in silence by God. No screens. Not even to verify that fact. You will struggle in the way your forefathers did and sit with the not knowing of things. See something funny? You will have to use expressive language to convey it's hilarity to the rest of us instead of a link. Your friend does not need an play by play of dinner. It's okay, they will survive, I swear. As a result, my kids know how to carry on a conversation at a table. Who knew?
Honestly, i can't blame this on just the parents. I had a love of learning my entire life, but the way school turns this love into a requirement and punishes you for not doing it correctly? that's part of the problem. high school broke that love for me and a lot of people because it took wonder and curiosity and turned it into busy work
And when I taught middle school for a decade I was the teacher that nipped that in the bud early. By around 2018 students knew parents and admin could eat out of their hands so they’d say I’m a dick and picking on them and I’d have to have a meeting about my methods (no tech no talking - yknow regular teacher running a functioning classroom stuff) unless we’re using it specifically for a project. I did not have the benefit of the doubt and these kids would hit the transfer portal to the teacher who let them fuck around where they didn’t learn. Our scores were night and day bc I was effective but after COVID I said fuck this and bailed. The power dynamic was something I got sick of putting my finger in the dam about. Too bad bc I liked my career, made great relationships with the kids that bought in, and was good at it.
I ran the ISS room in a high school for a few years. I confiscated their phones first thing upon arrival and that usually set the tone for the day. Most kids gave me the "Yeah, whatever" and handed it over. There were a few who wanted to make it difficult. One kid threatened to "kick your (my) fuckin ass if you think you're getting my phone." The regular teachers loved me because behavior actually got better and the kids got caught up in their work under my watch. I maxed out on the pay scale at $12.50/hr, despite the district requiring a license to hold the position. That shit wouldn't cover my loans. I quit and haven't looked back.
The ironic thing is that the type of people who make great teachers are wasted teaching
This is me. Since COVID I have given up. I haven’t lowered my standards but now don’t “bother” anyone not paying attention. The students who want to succeed can do well. The others get what they get. My failure rates are so high other teachers in the school check kids’ grades in my classes first before failing them. If they are failing mine, they feel failing theirs will draw less fire. A kid told me a year ago: “your class isn’t hard… you just hold us accountable for the work you assign. In other classes if enough people don’t do the work, the teacher will eventually cancel the assignment or give everyone fake grades.”
How are phones even allowed
They aren't, there are no such things as consequences in schools anymore, so students can get away with behavior like this with extremely limited reprecussions.
As a teacher I rather teach a quiet class than a rowdy class. You can fail and it's no one's fault but your own.
But do students even get failed anymore? The teachers sub leads me to believe they don't.
No child left behind brought the whole bar down so everyone can ‘succeed’
My kids school allows the kids to retake the tests and all assignments.
Why not give them a chance to prove they actually learned the material instead of telling them to kick rocks? Even if it takes a bit of failure to motivate them it’s better late than never
Because the consequences to schools if students fail are too big. Admin/districts pass those heavy consequences on teachers. Teachers change system so “success” now = passing the test. High stakes standardized tests created a huge, messy, bureaucratic problem and no one knows how to fix it. This is the legacy of Bush’s No Child Left Behind.
I think that's fair. If I fuck something up at work, it's a learning experience and I get a chance to fix it.
Social media and phones in the classroom are completely detrimental to the processes need to learn.
i hope this is the first week and they all think they can get away with not paying attention. but this guy sets hard tests and all these idiots fail hard and realize they need to focus to get somewhere in life
They'll fail, then blame the teacher for making it too hard or "not teaching them." Admin will ask the teacher for documentation about how they're supporting these students, then blame the teacher for not being "engaging" (as if anyone can compete with quick-dopamine machines). So the teacher will bump student grades up because now it's their job and paycheck on the line. The kids will go to the next grade; rinse and repeat until they finally get a diploma they can't read. We're so unwilling to blame kids for anything that they're held accountable for nothing. This is the result.
i mean would the existence of a video like this help the teacher?
Lmao no. This video would give admin ammunition to blame the teacher for not "engaging" the students and "building rapport".
Kids aren't allowed to be failed anymore thanks to no child left behind.
I wouldn't say this is the norm everywhere, but in the majority of places were massive consumerism push is the standard of human living. Kids are more distracted than ever these days due to attention overload. The child that wants to learn will pay attention or at least will find a way to get the information. We need better motivation long term.
Honestly looks like they're almost done for the day (chairs flipped onto desk to help the custodians clean up easier), and they have a little bit of free or screen time to kill before the bell. Teacher doesn't look mad or disappointed or apathetic at all. He's probably talking to a few of them about something, maybe even going over online class materials. There's lots of things that can be happening here, and we don't know without context. I subbed for 5 years in high schools, 13 seconds in a classroom can look like anything if you preface it with the right caption.
1. Homeroom 2. After school class as punishment 3. Classroom for the shitty kids that can't get along with others
100%. I work in schools and while there are students like this in almost every classroom, 90% of students still show up and do what they're supposed to. It's not too different these days expert it's easier to show shit like this out of context
My plan for when I have kiddos of my own is to give them technology as I received it. TV at 4, desktop home computer with educational games in family room at 5-6, hand held gaming 7-8, console/online gaming 8-9, limited internet access on computer at 9-10, dumb phone at 11-12, and finally smart phone and laptop at 14-15. Kids are addicted to their phones because their parents are, it’s as simple as that.
its because they can give them a phone and the phone parents them. people are just so fucking lazy they cant even be bothered to pay attention to their kids
So I learned from a friend who’s a mom of high schoolers that you basically need a newer phone to attend public school in Florida. She sent her daughter to school and she needed to be able to download like 14 apps including one that is used as a hall pass for the bathroom. Her older iPhone couldn’t accommodate so the teacher asked the class “Is there anyone that will allow SoandSo to use your phone so she can go to the bathroom?” How INSANE is that!? I’m 40 and if there was a phone out, we would have it confiscated until the end of the school year—I never got a cellphone until I graduated and was 18. Another friend is a professor at a private college—he says that he can tell by the format that his students are all having AI complete their assignments. So they’re literally paying 80k/yr to train AI…. So F’ing scary. At least previously, the rich kids were paying the poor, smart kids to do assignments so that the poor kids would be that much smarter in the workforce. Imagine the trajectory of all of this—and also with all the social media, they have no social skills…
whatever happened to those phone jails?
So, to give you an actual answer: most districts run into one of a couple of problems with the phone jail bag things. First is pretty straightforward: parents dont want them. If a parent needs to get ahold of their kid, most won't even think to call the office, theyll just call their kid. If their kid doesnt answer, and its because a teacher took their phone, I promise you 80% of parents will freak out at the teacher for preventing contact. Second is liability: If a kid puts their phone into a phone jail, and something happens to it (goes missing, is broken, etc.), then well, chances are the school is on the hook for that. Once it goes in the bag, it becomes the school's responsibility, and one of THE overriding concerns of schools these days is to avoid getting sued at all costs. Third is buy-in: You have to have every single student without exception buy in. If one or two students are exempt- even if its totally reasonable!- then every student that sees them will wonder "what makes THEM so special? Why cant I have MY phone?" And even though I will champion the genuine intelligence of teens and adolescents, their emotional regulation and reasoning usually isnt fully developed, and even if they LOGICALLY know there is a good reason, its hard to just logic away the FEELINGS of unfairness, which often leads to kids bucking the rules (again, its not that kids these days are especially rebellious. Its just the tendency of youth to push back against perceived injustice even if it makes some adults roll their eyes), and at a certain point as a teacher, you just have better things to do than fight that fight. And all of this is ignoring a HUGE factor: Cost. Lots of districts are pretty strapped for cash. This stuff costs money, and not every district can afford it, so that money will go somewhere else first (granted misappropriation of educational funding is insane, but thats a rant for a different thread) All in all, for most districts, its just not worth the headache
Parents push back and asshole parents are the main reasons teachers are leaving in droves.
I feel bad for them… The teacher because nobody’s listening to him The students because they don’t pay attention
Because that’s his job. If you don’t listen and continue to be a dumbfuck that’s on you the rest of your life
Then they'll complain later saying, "Why didn't they teach us taxes"
These kids today got it easy. When I was in school, my teachers would shoot you if you weren't paying attention.
You had it easy, we got molested by the orchestra director.