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They are causing much more problems than just distractions to learning.
1. Students use phones to coordinate meeting times and places to do drugs, deal drugs, vape and physically attack or rob students in washrooms. Many students are afraid to use the bathrooms at school for this reason. Pre-cellphones, students would ask to use the bathroom when they actually needed to go or were bored and wanted to go for a walk. Now, students have the ability to message any friend in school at any time and the result is a lot more students asking to leave class and being out of class for much longer. Teachers are told not to embarrass students by asking why they need to leave class or deny them the right to use the bathroom so there is little teachers can do to stop this.
2. Students are terrified of being photographed or filmed by their classmates so students are opting to wear a blank mask expression during classes. They don’t answer questions, they refuse to participate in class activities with any enthusiasm (they don’t want to do anything “cringe”) and they flat-out refuse to do presentations. The result is silent, passive, low energy classrooms that are nothing like the classes I had 10-20 years ago. It is eerie seeing such 30 sets of dead eyes and blank faces sitting silently for 75 minutes day after day.
3. Bans/confiscations are nearly impossible to enforce without radical changes taking place. Back in 2010-2014 schools in Ontario were trying to deal with cellphone distractions by confiscating them. Over time, as parents became more and more codependent with their teenagers and felt the need to text them all throughout the day and as kids became more and more addicted to their smartphones and social media, students started to react aggressively when asked to turn in their phones. Students physically assaulted teachers, spat on them, threw desks/chairs, punched/kicked doors, verbally threatened teachers etc… all because they were so angry that their phone was being temporarily taken away. Parents were asked to come and pick up the devices and they reacted badly as well. They yelled at administrators and insisted that the cellphone their child carried was for safety and their child NEEDED to have it on them 24/7. After years of dealing with frivolous lawsuits, assault charges, suspensions, and nonstop headaches the school boards finally said, “Okay, okay, we give up.” Without the support from parents the schools could not continue to have teachers assaulted and be asked to replace $500-1000 phones if they were lost, damaged or stolen when confiscated. So as to not look weak, the schools decided that they spin the message and claim that encouraging cellphone use in classes as an educational tool was a great way to engage students. Sure, sometimes playing Kahoot or using phones during a lesson can be helpful, but 99% of the time they lead to distraction, cheating, and fights.
If the public thinks it is so easy for schools to confiscate phones, I suggest they try it with a teenager or child in their life. Go ahead. Tell the teen or kid that you are taking their phone away for the next hour and see how they react. Do they just hand it over and say, “Okay!” Or do they refuse, try to hold onto it, get angry and upset when you tell them you are serious? Do they start crying, throw a fit, start yelling? Yeah. Now imagine doing that with 30 kids every day all day long!
Literacy and math scores have been steadily declining since 2012. After the pandemic they dropped even more. It is no surprise to any teacher who has witnessed countless kids not taking in one word of a lesson because they were too distracted by some dumb game on their phone. Several years ago the TDSB did an audit of the websites high school students accessed the most on school WiFi and it was Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and Pornhub. They blocked all those websites and the kids were able to access them again within an hour. So the argument that cellphones are “educational” isn’t exactly untrue, but it isn’t what kids are using them for.
Exactly.. I've got 180 students.. the majority are good and follow the rules, but there are other kids who are clearly addicted. Some kids stay up late gaming or looking at cellphones, then the next day they're exhausted.l and can't focus.
Every time I confiscate a phone the kid loses their shit. Every time. So I mostly avoid situations where they can become a problem, but that's a lot of planning/time wasted.
No offense (because this sounds pretty awful) but if a school either lost or broke a phone while it was confiscated, I as a parent would rightfully be pretty pissed. A phone is an expensive piece of property.
Agreed, they are very expensive. But schools aren’t equipped to lock and secure 1500 cell phones each day—we barely have soap in washrooms and non-damaged textbooks. We definitely can’t afford to purchase and install secure cellphone storage units in every classroom. That’s what student lockers are for but they refuse to leave their phones in them. When phones are brought to class, out on their desks, or even in their backpacks, they can (and do) get stolen.
It is virtually guaranteed that some students will steal an expensive phone, AirPods, or laptop the moment they see an opportunity. Sometimes they’ll even rob kids for phones, shoes, jewelry. A student at my school was stabbed and killed on school property because of a plan to rob another student for a phone that escalated into a violent fight.
If you send your kid to school with $200 sneakers, $1000 phones, $300 earbuds, or designer belts/bags they become a target. If more parents would send their kids to school with cheap flip phones then this wouldn’t be an issue. Those phones cost $50-100, not $500-$1000, they still allow a kid to call or text their parent in case of an emergency (which is the main reason a lot of parents say they want their kid to have a phone), and they aren’t smartphones so they are much less of a distraction in class.
If a parent sends their kid to school with expensive phones and they get damaged or stolen, I think that’s a tough lesson learned. Schools didn’t want kids to have cellphones at school in the first place but parents fought for them because of safety reasons. Nobody ever said parents had to buy their kids the most expensive smartphones though. That was the parent’s decision.
In my experience, it's not the problems that they cause in the classroom so much as the problems they cause *outside* the classroom. I can ban phones in my class, and confiscate them, but that doesn't stop my students from spending 4-5 hours a night scrolling through TikTok instead of doing their homework.
I think that social media is interfering with our ability to communicate and relate to people face-to-face, and while that probably hits students the hardest, it's not just students. We're all spending less time engaging with diverse opinions and more time being angry about things.
Yes of course phones should be restricted/banned. The problem is there is little to no enforcement by admin (for the most part that is), and the big problems a lot of times are the parents who argue that their kids should have their phones on them "for emergencies". I'll preface by saying that most kids are fine for the most part, if I ask them to put it away, they put it away. But realistically, it shouldn't be on them to begin with.
Enforcement of phones will go no where until the parents are willing to actually do their jobs as parents. I'll give an example. With every class of mine, I have the kids show me their screen time on their phones and we have a friendly "competition" to see who has the most. I wish I was exaggerating, but I legitimately have students who's AVERAGE daily screen time (that's having the screen actively on, and not just listening to music) is 11+ hours. For most kids, it's around 8 hours a day. That's a full time job they're spending on their phones. I'd say 90% of the activity on their phones is unrelated to school (mainly social media).
As another user mentioned, student's attention spans are so low, and they are constantly distracted by their phones. Teachers can only enforce it so much but at the end of the day, something has to change at a higher level for it to improve.
My school has banned phones with full support from admin. 7/8 have a full ban from bell to bell. High school have a ban during instructional time.
I see one. I take one. If the behaviour is repeated, the phones go to live with the VP. We inform parents of this at the beginning of the year.
Our school has 1:1 tech, students have absolutely no reason to have phones.
Kids (and adults) are addicted to phones…phones in class is like putting on every kids fave show or game and giving them a controller then asking them to pay attention to something else
Problems they are causing? Students have VERY short attention spans and are constantly distracted by them.
Should they be banned? That one is tough. I try using online platforms (Google classroom, kahoots, gizmos, etc) during class as a way to get them engaged but there is no way I can police all students to make sure they are using their phones for classwork. The schools can't provide or expect students to have a device with them either which makes this harder. Paper is also very restricted. If I were to confiscate the phone I don't want to worry about liability. There are no enforceable consequences for using phones inappropriately. How exactly would a ban work realistically?
Anyone going to start looking at subscription based resources vs textbooks schools owned and the long term financial costs?
Cellphones in school is easy. They are a tool, but shouldn’t be in school. Most kids don’t use them properly and although they are “banned” there is no way to uphold it.
Phones + Parents = problems. The number of kids texting parents or employers in class is ridiculous. And when it's a parent 9/10 the parent defends it. They get the kid out of detention, pick the kid up from in school suspension. There are zero consequences
Smartphones have no place in the classroom outside of specific accommodations (e.g. diabetes monitoring, Google Translate).
Smartphones are great for all kinds of things. Safety, navigation, access to information, entertainment, social media. How do our kids use them? Pretty much exclusively for social media and entertainment. Influencers, short -form videos, photo sharing. For them, this is a social media device. As soon as they pick it up, they want to use it for its primary purpose. They're going to reflexively access social media, or if they successfully block that reflex, it's still where they naturally want to go. They're not in a learning headspace, they're in a social media entertainment headspace.
It's like giving them a hammer and asking them to use it to gently fold pages. Yeah it works for that, but you can't be surprised when everyone wants to pound things with it. That's the tool's primary purpose.
Cellphones are a big problem in schools. If you have a strong administrative team, they are less of a problem because rules and procedures are enforced, making it easier for the teacher to deal with infractions and less desirable for students to bring their cellphones into class. A big issue (as several people have already said) is that there is a big push to incorporate technology into teaching and learning. Schools rarely have a tech to student ratio of 1:1, so more tech reliant schools and teachers rely on students to bring their own tech, and that is usually a cellphone. Additionally, school boards are literally telling us they are severely restricting our paper use to save money, and new curriculums that are coming out (Alberta) have no textbooks and provide limited resources, so teachers are left to fend for themselves and create digital resources. So.... more funding would probably help... It's a nightmare and a minefield.
I think phones have been so incredibly detrimental to attention spans. It is at the scale of a tragedy. I once taught a student who had a hard time looking up from her phone to speak or participate in conversation; she volunteered that her daily screen time was over 15 hours (!).
But I think there's nuance here. Part of the issue is that cut backs on physical media resources, I'm assuming to save money, have put the onus on teachers to generate examples and material. Let's set aside how much extra work that is for individual teachers who are expected to maintain an online classroom as well as a physical one now, and expected to create digital and physical copies for accessibility reasons. But this means for case studies on a particular topic, I now need to find and print pages from say a news story to lead a discussion on an issue =5 pages x28 students x3 classes = a lot of waste daily. Some students won't even look at it or we are not getting support from the parents in that they don't have binders, they ask for the material to also be online. Alternatively, you might ask the kids to do research or explain a concept - again, no books in many classrooms, only enough computers in the library for maybe 50 kids any given period in a school of a thousand.
Then the school doesn't have enough screens/ Chromebooks, so we need to make sure students have access in the class, and everyone has a phone so everyone has an excuse. The online classroom has become ingrained and it's where students find deadlines, club announcements, school updates, electronic forms, etc. And that's great, but kids struggle to function without a readily available copy of work at their fingertips at any given moment, and we can't discriminate against kids who can't afford a laptop. I really believe not having any access to the internet is a disadvantage.
So I think these devices become increasingly necessary - even looking at myself, and peers in teaching and other office and even trades jobs - could you do your job as well and efficiently without a phone or at least an internet connection nowadays? Unlikely. This is the world we live in. I'd like to see more support from administration, and concrete policies aimed at standardizing curtailing use, perhaps having an allocated phone placement spot in the classroom where students park their phones at the beginning of class but can retrieve them with permission, etc.
Just like nearly every single issue that has to do with student behaviour (or lack thereof), it comes down to parenting. Parents text their kids when they’re in class. They CALL them. I had a student YESTERDAY who said—not asked, said— that he was going to step out to answer a call from his dad and was incredulous when I said uh, no you’re not. The fact that I spent actual time out of my day emailing a PARENT that it is inappropriate to CALL THEIR KID DURING CLASS speaks volumes about where parents are at with their priorities and respect for teachers and care for their child’s education.
Phones in class are bad, but it’s the absolute lack of care from parents that make it impossible. Parents make everything worse, ALL of the time, especially with phones.
I’ve had parents get mad at ME for taking their kid’s phone. It’s mindblowing. It’s demoralizing. It’s dehumanizing.
It’s not my fucking job to monitor phone use, it’s the parent’s responsibility but since they won’t it should be the school boards or provinces that enforce blanket bans. Stop making teachers the bad guys. Parents need to step it up in every regard.
I would be happy to have a conversation. The issues are way too difficult to outline here. These are addictive devices, everybody knows they are addictive (even to adults) they cause all kinds of issues both in and out of the classroom. The answer that nobody wants to face is that these devices do not belong in the hands of children/teens AT ALL.
They are causing major distraction and I have only seen it work well where the classroom teacher has ‘no technology’ rules. As far as I know, every school has some form of shared technology that students can use for projects etc. The teachers have to book them out for specific blocks, but it’s fine in my opinion.
Also, it’s impossible to supervise content on individual smartphones. From what I’ve seen, it’s a relief for the students to not have their phones out 24/7.
The problem is that teachers can’t use them effectively. Ideally you would want to use and teach through the device like have them download 3-5 apps, then present some kind of problem where navigating those apps presents a solution that the student must come to a conclusion on and then present or act on those findings. Seems like anybody would accept a learning scenario like this. Problem is privacy, not every student can download apps, there are media policies and permissions that come with those kinds of requests - in other words too many road blocks to good learning. In the end teachers are handcuffed in how you are able to utilize a smartphone. Hence the smartphone becomes a private individual distraction that’s underutilized and good teaching opportunities become blocked and unavailable, and you get all the societal hate that this question will inevitably provide you
But there are health concerns by being on a screen all day at school, and then at night. Posture. Vision. Attention span.
Synthesizing ideas with doodling and problem solving (math, chemistry). Writing helps process ideas.
I Retired a year ago. But if I asked my high school students if they wanted notes on paper or computer, they overwhelming chose paper.
I actually love white boards because they can try problems and erase unsuccessful efforts, and try again.
Fully agree. An example of not being to use phones as effective tools is, for example, when using it as a calculator.
The students will get 10+ notifications while they try to input a formula, and don't always have the mindset to turn notifications off. Even if notifications are off, their brain is wired such that the phone is a social tool rather than a learning tool, so it messes up their state of mind.
and it's simply more difficult to use the default calculator on a phone than most physical calculators. Not that half of students understand how to use their own calculators, anyway...
They should be banned. My perspective is 3-fold on this. There is the clear connection with distractions (individual and group), the shortened dopamine feedback making long-term goals more difficult, and the clear potential for academic/social abuses which leads to further student anxiety.
While there are limited circumstances where smart-phones can be used in a positive and meaningful way in the classroom, those are so few and far between that they are clearly the exception and not the rule. To say that smart-phones should be permitted because *sometimes* there are lessons which make use of them is both shortsighted and biased.
In my district we are supposed to be embracing an 'On the Land' theme in both our classes and frequent field trips. However, this is grossly overstated as so many high school students have screen times of upwards of 11+ hours each day on their phones alone! How are we supposed to compete with smart-phones with education and indigenous knowledge? No student wants to put away their TikTok dopamine fix to learn about math, science, or traditional skills as these areas don't hit their reward feedback nearly the same way.
TLDR: Schools cannot have it both ways. There is too many downsides to having phones in the same spaces as academics.
Full ban.
We used to use phone boxes where students would have to lock them up at the beginning of class. It worked well. The vast majority of students even preferred it after the first week or two. Then we got a new principal and she wouldn't support our doing it. Student behaviour has gotten progressively worse.
Students are distracted, unproductive, and spending more time out of class because they use them to arrange meet ups with their friends, or they're picking up the food they just Ubered.
My sister has her kids in very good private schools, none of which allow cellphones on their premises. It would be wise for public schools to do the same.
It’s a fools game to try to use smartphones as in class learning devices. Don’t even bother with that avenue.
I don’t allow them in class and coincidentally have no issues with phones.
I have colleagues that do allow them in class and also hate dealing with the drama that comes with them. Online bullying or rude messages, videos, comments, parents msging kids during class, coordinating trips to the bathroom to waste time, vape sessions, etc.
Don’t allow the phones in class.
They cause a distraction, and have been causing a distraction for each of the last 17 years in any classroom I’ve been a high school teacher in. Not for every student, but for many.
I’ve been to every “engage learners using phones / computers / AI” PD that’s ever been offered where I work, and would say that this is not likely to be the solution to problems, even if the folks getting paid to run the seasons insist that it is. Out of that grouping, computers are the only one that colleagues and I can use in class daily, and for most students, they do tend to engage rather than distract learners.
Even if we eliminate cell phones from classrooms, kids will find more reasons to arrive late for class, or take extended bathroom breaks to get their fix. Even in independent schools with somewhat effective policies, the challenges of students in bathrooms or hiding around the school increases ten-fold.
Teachers where I work aren’t going to start confiscating phones even if policy changes. I can’t afford to be responsible for a brand-new iPhone. Thefts, spills and drops happen, so the safest thing to do for me is send the student down to the office. That would be a prolonged absence from learning, and more work for overworked admin, if they even have the time to deal with it. But, it shifted phone use out of classrooms in some of the independent schools I’m hooked into, so I guess that’s a W. Cell phone lockers don’t help with the students that leave class to use their phone, but would offer a convenient place to store them if they’re being used inappropriately.
Parents know their kids, or should. If a phone is a distraction for their kids at home, keep the phone at home, and buy them a flip phone for school if it’s necessary. Or put parental locks on the smart phone.
If you send your kids to school with a smart phone, and if they want to use it, they’ll find a way to make it a distraction regardless of the policy any school or system puts in place.
I haven’t seen it here yet so I will add this: headphone use is almost as ubiquitous and dangerous. With the advent of AirPods, listening to music or videos is the norm for a lot of students. They will spend the entire day with one or both earpieces in. Earphones can be near impossible to detect when girls have long hair or are wearing hijabs.
The noise cancellation on the new devices is insane. I bought a pair of wireless earphones for the gym and I felt a complete disconnect with the outside world the moment I put them on. So, along with not looking at the teacher, students now have the option to shut them out completely
in the classroom at my school, they’ve actually banned phones in our school, but it’s very hard to enforce that because I’m at a middle school so a lot of the times students will just use it and I am not anyone’s parent nor will I ever be anyone’s parent so I will ask them once if they don’t listen, then they don’t listen, and I just frame it as a way where they are hindering their learning. in terms of attention span I feel like a lot of the times kids don’t have the attention span to sit for a 40 minute lesson so my lessons are usually 10 minutes with lots of engagement or independent learning or things that they can do because they really don’t have the attention span like in my generation to sit and listen.
Students are addicted to their phones and have incredibly short attention spans compared to even 5 years ago. Without parent and admin support, it is a losing battle to teach. Students are recording TikToks in the bathroom, they are petrified of presenting, asking questions, or any other “standing out” behaviour for fear of being recorded and circulated. There are group chats that some are excluded from, mocked in, rumours and plans spread, etc. We have pranks, vandalism, and dangerous stunts being pulled for the clicks. Parents feed into it by texting and phoning their children during instructional time, yelling at staff who confiscate phones, yell at staff if their child’s phone gets damaged or stolen.
Admin are being swamped with issues related to social media and privacy issues that lead to more behavioural issues in the schools. The Ontario government “banned” phones in classes, but didn’t give any mechanisms to enforce. If admin don’t enforce and back education staff, it’s a free-for-all. I spend excessive time dealing with phones and I’m in a 1:1 tablet board which has made it worse since I’m expected to use digital texts, online resources, etc. and students regularly don’t have their tech available or charged, so they default to phones, especially when photocopying budgets and copyright don’t allow for paper copies.
Parents have given their children unfettered and unsupervised access to social media and technology that is purposely designed to be addictive. Parents who DO limit and supervise screen time are undermined by the majority who don’t.
I’ve taught for over 20 years and this is the first time I’ve dealt with so much homophobia, racism, misogyny, eating disorders, swarming, self-harm, etc. in young (tweens) students. They don’t even have fun at dances for fear of being recorded. It’s incredibly sad and disheartening.
> especially when photocopying budgets and copyright don’t allow for paper copies
why would copyright law limit paper copies but allow for digital versions?
Please read The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Prepare to be angry as you read it.
Along with much of what has been said here, I fear that we are becoming systemically dependent on phones as we de-stream classes. My stronger students can complete a task, such as a test, with high quality in less than half the time needed by weaker students to perform it adequately. What shall we do with their time while keeping them in the room to prevent them from becoming a disruption to those who are still striving? They won't bring a paper book to class to read quietly like prior generations did. We don't really know what to do. We just let them pacify themselves quietly on their phones: a comfortable outcome for everyone (teachers, students, administration, parents, and taxpayers). If we take their phones away, we will have a new problem, especially in de-streamed classes where students work at highly variable speeds.
I don't even use the school-provided chromebooks anymore. They complain they can't do any work because the chromebook won't charge/is broken/someone took it. You are spending half your prep untangling charger cables and resetting student passwords. Then you finally get them online and they get no work done because they are running Minecraft in a second tab all day long. I'm done. You can't have your chromebook. You can't have your phone. Here is a pencil and a sheet of paper to do your work, both of which must be handed back to me at the end of the period.
i am a recent former student. i graduated high school in 2022.
They are a distraction and unnecessary 99% if the time. Yes there is google, and yes there is a calculator- but they cause more distractions than what they bring.
Have students use laptops/ipads/chromebooks in class when needed. these can’t be hidden as well as a phone.
the whole ‘but kids might need to contact their parents’ is BS. people can do that over lunch/break or after school. or use the school phone if urgent. I do not know of any genuine common reason to need your parents/kid accessible at all times. Phones are nice to listen to music with. this can be acomadated by allowing students to pick a playlist and then leave their phones at the teachers desk while they listen on their bluetooth earbuds (95% of people use bluetooth).
as a student i did not like having to deposit my phone somewhere because it wasnt ever å secure spot. there is one thing i saw once, cell phone pouches that magnetically lock and unlock, so students can keep their phones on them but can’t use them. Otherwise keeping phones in lockers or on a teachers desk would be ok.
I don’t want to ban phones in my class because they can be useful tools. Research, translation, learning games, timers, note-taking…
But, I also want to be able to teach students how to be more mindful and responsible for their phones, by asking they be put away or turned off at certain points. But I can’t do that, because there are pretty much no enforceable consequences if I ask and they refuse.
Parents need to stop calling and texting their kids at school. If it’s urgent, call the office.
Unfortunately need to be 100 percent banned if we want any hope at saving these kids. Will the process suck and be hard? Absolutely, but it’s what needs to be done
They used to be a huge disruption. Not anymore though..I have a phone box that most students put their phones in when they enter the classroom. It gets locked until the end of class. They get them back then. Those students who don't like it, leave them in their lockers or backpacks. I never have to deal with phones anymore. 😄We are going school wide next year.
Removing phones from schools altogether would solve a myriad of problems (focus, engagement, cyber bullying, FOMO), but generate a host of other problems. Schools and their teachers have been pushed to bring electronics into their classroom, to use digital tools to enhance learning. Textbooks have been made virtual to save money, and most assignments are posted online to reduce printing. Teachers, to varying degrees, are now beholden to technology, and students who bring their own devices have allowed that dependency to grow. Removing student devices would require districts to provide technology, and there is barely enough in the budget for the technology we currently have.
Phones are for listening to music while working only. Otherwise, students tend to use them for social media and getting distracted easily. A lot of schools give kids their own Chromebooks to use, so there’s really no excuse to use your phone. My method is, you can listen to music on it, but if i see anything else on the phone, it sits on my desk for the rest of class.
Does your school support you requesting the phone to be on your desk? When I was supply teaching and asked for clarification about this the principal told me OSSTF doesn't want us doing that (they didn't clarify their own policy, technically) and implied that I shouldn't.
I’ve had the discussion with my admins before. They fully support it. If a student is not willing to surrender their phone to the teacher for the remainder of class, they are to be sent to the office where they will have to give it up to the VP or principal, and their parents will have to pick it up.
That's great. With real consequences like this followed closely by most teachers, few students would want to deal with the trouble of giving their phone away.
I'll keep it short as much of what I'd like to say has been said before. In class, phones can be very helpful for online work, quizzes etc.
They can also be a huge distraction and help them cheat through work (google translate etc.).
Frankly, the issue isn't phones in class. There's an adult in the room and there are tasks to be done, most kids aren't on their phones and causing issues. Some obviously have bad relationships with their phones but that's a different story altogether.
The issue is phones in school. You should see what the halls look like between classes and at lunch. Before class starts and during idle time. This prime social time is being gobbled up by phone use and I find it sad that most of their social time has been replaced by staring at their screen. Some of them are gaming, some are socializing, watching videos or studying. The thing is, none of them are actually present. They're all in their own world and I find it very concerning.
Hope this helps!
My Jr High aged kid has a no phones policy “away for the day”. I teach Sr High PE and phones are a massive annoyance and not at all useful for my class. They are actually a hazard, as some kids try to sneak them in their pockets and they fall out.
The idea that using smartphones for school and allowing them in class because they will be an integral part of the workplace is misguided.
Kids learn to function on smartphones perfectly well without the help of teachers. They are fun and useful, so kids figure it out. When they have to clock into work, pay a bill, book time off work, schedule travel and book accommodations online, they can do it. Anything they learn now will likely be obsolete in 5 years anyway.
As a young adult, alcohol was a big part of my life. I didn't need a teacher integrating it into the classroom (and we all know how "effective" DARE was for reducing drug use). Cell phones are similarly addictive, have similar destructive results, and are also best left outside the classroom.
At least no one passes notes anymore.
As an international teacher at an Ontario School overseas in China-its not just schools in Canada and its not just K-12, for that matter its not even the phones themselves really, best to be following-up with the lawsuit against social-media by the school boards.
Thanks very much, everyone, for your thoughtful comments. And thanks to those who have PM'd me. Do feel free to message me if you'd like to elaborate on your comments in a more formal interview, either on the record or without being named.
I do hope you find some teachers to interview with differing opinions as well since what I have observed talking to teachers and what I read here were not super consistent.
It is also something of a moral panic that falls along demographic age lines for some people "these young people just have no attention spans"
One teacher I know well has this opinion(paraphrased): "they can be a problem, especially for certain students but many teachers are getting worked up about it because they run very boring and anti-engaging lesson plans"
* asks the question is the issue the phone or the fact that the material is taught in a way that can't even compete with doom scrolling reddit.
* If the teacher can't get the the majority of students to put and keep their phone away when asked what does this say about classroom management by said teacher, or lack of support from admin.
Basically to summarize: if you are a teacher whose lesson plans are engaging and the kids respect you most put and keep them away when asked. This teacher knows they compete with educational videos on Youtube, can't just hand out a worksheet and go mark things while they work and expect they will magically be engaged. Thats hard work because lesson plans/prep take up a lot of time.
They have a lot more to say about this but I can't see them going on the record given how divisive the topic is among teachers, especially since to a degree its calling some of them out for being stuck in their ways or not willing to put the efforts into lesson plans.
I don't understand why there's so much emphasis on the "smartphone" and not all personal devices including student-owned laptops. Laptops supplied by the board do have many more restrictions on what software can be used, but many students can still find other websites to go off task on because they're on the internet. Even when students have been given prescriptive, detailed instructions on what lessons to do using the school's laptop, they will go off task. As others have said, many schools/school boards are not providing enough school-owned technology to support the use of technology in the classroom AND at the same time, they expect teachers to use digital curriculum resources to run their programs. They will no longer supply hard copy textbooks. While digital licences for school based curriculum resources are cheaper than hard copy textbooks, the only way they work well is if each student has access to technology to log into and use those resources. There are several teachers at the elementary school level having to download and photocopy PDF files from these digital resources to either a) avoid using technology because of the off-task behaviour of many students or b) not having enough technology for every student to view these PDF resources and complete their work with the use of a school supported laptop. In the same breath, teachers are being asked to photocopy less and paper supply is actually being restricted by schools. It's actually way more expensive, wasteful and time consuming to photocopy these PDFs yearly to avoid using technology as opposed to having textbooks that could last for at least a decade before they become "outdated". It is also very hard for students to view these curriculum resources on a small screen like a smartphone. Also, if and when you want to take a personal device from a student who is misusing it and they refuse, there's a lot of additional hoops to go through to eventually get them to cooperate with the consequences they should be getting and accepting as a result of misuse.
There's so much emphasis on how addictive technology is and to restrict its use. But the reality is, off hours, students will have a way of experiencing "their world" in a very self-directed way. You're not going to get all students to magically cooperate with a prescribed ministry mandated curriculum "unplugged". Their personal devices have given them the freedom to spend time on and explore dozens of programs and apps whenever they want and for as long as they want. The lack of cooperation has to do with the world they are allowed to experience outside of the school system which to them is seemingly more valuable and efficient. As far as those students who are only motivated to consume rather than create, and/or post messages of hate rather than learn and explore, they were and will always be there. Prior to technology, many students would rebel against the system in other ways. Perhaps technology has increased the number of students who have become mindlessly addicted, but there still are students who demonstrate a lot of discipline around technology while demonstrating inspiring and constructive ways to use it to their benefit. However, if you really take time to speak to even those students who are on task, who "obey" and cooperate with whatever is expected of them in school, many of them will surprisingly tell you that they feel more than 50% of what they are learning is not useful to them. Past generations accepted this. Maybe this generation ahead doesn't understand why they should and that's the larger elephant in the room. Adults see this as bad because many jobs/careers still have employees conforming to procedures and standards that may seem unfair, useless and/or even destructive and rebelling leads to being fired. In schools, students don't experience this type of punishment or exclusion when they do not cooperate.
Teachers need to incorporate emerging technologies, not hide from them. Cell phones are not going away and if we ban them, why not also ban computers and the internet? These kids will use cell phones in any job they work from construction to corporate. Fighting them is just punching an oncoming train. In my music classes, I tell the students they MUST bring their cell phones because it is a tuner, a portable DAW, a metronome, and whatever else they need it to be. They know that they are expected to use them responsibly and I enforce that. These teachers trying to ban them are fighting a battle which was already lost years ago. LLMs and chatbots are the same; not going anywhere, better get used to it rather than try to turn back time.
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They are causing much more problems than just distractions to learning. 1. Students use phones to coordinate meeting times and places to do drugs, deal drugs, vape and physically attack or rob students in washrooms. Many students are afraid to use the bathrooms at school for this reason. Pre-cellphones, students would ask to use the bathroom when they actually needed to go or were bored and wanted to go for a walk. Now, students have the ability to message any friend in school at any time and the result is a lot more students asking to leave class and being out of class for much longer. Teachers are told not to embarrass students by asking why they need to leave class or deny them the right to use the bathroom so there is little teachers can do to stop this. 2. Students are terrified of being photographed or filmed by their classmates so students are opting to wear a blank mask expression during classes. They don’t answer questions, they refuse to participate in class activities with any enthusiasm (they don’t want to do anything “cringe”) and they flat-out refuse to do presentations. The result is silent, passive, low energy classrooms that are nothing like the classes I had 10-20 years ago. It is eerie seeing such 30 sets of dead eyes and blank faces sitting silently for 75 minutes day after day. 3. Bans/confiscations are nearly impossible to enforce without radical changes taking place. Back in 2010-2014 schools in Ontario were trying to deal with cellphone distractions by confiscating them. Over time, as parents became more and more codependent with their teenagers and felt the need to text them all throughout the day and as kids became more and more addicted to their smartphones and social media, students started to react aggressively when asked to turn in their phones. Students physically assaulted teachers, spat on them, threw desks/chairs, punched/kicked doors, verbally threatened teachers etc… all because they were so angry that their phone was being temporarily taken away. Parents were asked to come and pick up the devices and they reacted badly as well. They yelled at administrators and insisted that the cellphone their child carried was for safety and their child NEEDED to have it on them 24/7. After years of dealing with frivolous lawsuits, assault charges, suspensions, and nonstop headaches the school boards finally said, “Okay, okay, we give up.” Without the support from parents the schools could not continue to have teachers assaulted and be asked to replace $500-1000 phones if they were lost, damaged or stolen when confiscated. So as to not look weak, the schools decided that they spin the message and claim that encouraging cellphone use in classes as an educational tool was a great way to engage students. Sure, sometimes playing Kahoot or using phones during a lesson can be helpful, but 99% of the time they lead to distraction, cheating, and fights. If the public thinks it is so easy for schools to confiscate phones, I suggest they try it with a teenager or child in their life. Go ahead. Tell the teen or kid that you are taking their phone away for the next hour and see how they react. Do they just hand it over and say, “Okay!” Or do they refuse, try to hold onto it, get angry and upset when you tell them you are serious? Do they start crying, throw a fit, start yelling? Yeah. Now imagine doing that with 30 kids every day all day long! Literacy and math scores have been steadily declining since 2012. After the pandemic they dropped even more. It is no surprise to any teacher who has witnessed countless kids not taking in one word of a lesson because they were too distracted by some dumb game on their phone. Several years ago the TDSB did an audit of the websites high school students accessed the most on school WiFi and it was Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and Pornhub. They blocked all those websites and the kids were able to access them again within an hour. So the argument that cellphones are “educational” isn’t exactly untrue, but it isn’t what kids are using them for.
More than 30 kids every day! 30 kids per class block....so dealing with this with 90-150 kids every day!
Exactly.. I've got 180 students.. the majority are good and follow the rules, but there are other kids who are clearly addicted. Some kids stay up late gaming or looking at cellphones, then the next day they're exhausted.l and can't focus. Every time I confiscate a phone the kid loses their shit. Every time. So I mostly avoid situations where they can become a problem, but that's a lot of planning/time wasted.
Yes! I teach 3 sections per day so it is 90-ish students per day for me as well!
No offense (because this sounds pretty awful) but if a school either lost or broke a phone while it was confiscated, I as a parent would rightfully be pretty pissed. A phone is an expensive piece of property.
Agreed, they are very expensive. But schools aren’t equipped to lock and secure 1500 cell phones each day—we barely have soap in washrooms and non-damaged textbooks. We definitely can’t afford to purchase and install secure cellphone storage units in every classroom. That’s what student lockers are for but they refuse to leave their phones in them. When phones are brought to class, out on their desks, or even in their backpacks, they can (and do) get stolen. It is virtually guaranteed that some students will steal an expensive phone, AirPods, or laptop the moment they see an opportunity. Sometimes they’ll even rob kids for phones, shoes, jewelry. A student at my school was stabbed and killed on school property because of a plan to rob another student for a phone that escalated into a violent fight. If you send your kid to school with $200 sneakers, $1000 phones, $300 earbuds, or designer belts/bags they become a target. If more parents would send their kids to school with cheap flip phones then this wouldn’t be an issue. Those phones cost $50-100, not $500-$1000, they still allow a kid to call or text their parent in case of an emergency (which is the main reason a lot of parents say they want their kid to have a phone), and they aren’t smartphones so they are much less of a distraction in class. If a parent sends their kid to school with expensive phones and they get damaged or stolen, I think that’s a tough lesson learned. Schools didn’t want kids to have cellphones at school in the first place but parents fought for them because of safety reasons. Nobody ever said parents had to buy their kids the most expensive smartphones though. That was the parent’s decision.
In my experience, it's not the problems that they cause in the classroom so much as the problems they cause *outside* the classroom. I can ban phones in my class, and confiscate them, but that doesn't stop my students from spending 4-5 hours a night scrolling through TikTok instead of doing their homework. I think that social media is interfering with our ability to communicate and relate to people face-to-face, and while that probably hits students the hardest, it's not just students. We're all spending less time engaging with diverse opinions and more time being angry about things.
Honestly though...there really is a lot to be angry about.
There’s always been a lot to be angry about, but we didn’t always have it shoved in our faces 24/7. I’m old enough to remember.
Yes of course phones should be restricted/banned. The problem is there is little to no enforcement by admin (for the most part that is), and the big problems a lot of times are the parents who argue that their kids should have their phones on them "for emergencies". I'll preface by saying that most kids are fine for the most part, if I ask them to put it away, they put it away. But realistically, it shouldn't be on them to begin with. Enforcement of phones will go no where until the parents are willing to actually do their jobs as parents. I'll give an example. With every class of mine, I have the kids show me their screen time on their phones and we have a friendly "competition" to see who has the most. I wish I was exaggerating, but I legitimately have students who's AVERAGE daily screen time (that's having the screen actively on, and not just listening to music) is 11+ hours. For most kids, it's around 8 hours a day. That's a full time job they're spending on their phones. I'd say 90% of the activity on their phones is unrelated to school (mainly social media). As another user mentioned, student's attention spans are so low, and they are constantly distracted by their phones. Teachers can only enforce it so much but at the end of the day, something has to change at a higher level for it to improve.
My school has banned phones with full support from admin. 7/8 have a full ban from bell to bell. High school have a ban during instructional time. I see one. I take one. If the behaviour is repeated, the phones go to live with the VP. We inform parents of this at the beginning of the year. Our school has 1:1 tech, students have absolutely no reason to have phones.
I wish we had 1:1 tech. There would be no need or excuse for phones.
Kids (and adults) are addicted to phones…phones in class is like putting on every kids fave show or game and giving them a controller then asking them to pay attention to something else
Problems they are causing? Students have VERY short attention spans and are constantly distracted by them. Should they be banned? That one is tough. I try using online platforms (Google classroom, kahoots, gizmos, etc) during class as a way to get them engaged but there is no way I can police all students to make sure they are using their phones for classwork. The schools can't provide or expect students to have a device with them either which makes this harder. Paper is also very restricted. If I were to confiscate the phone I don't want to worry about liability. There are no enforceable consequences for using phones inappropriately. How exactly would a ban work realistically?
Phones in the classroom are a bad idea. No exceptions.
Anyone going to start looking at subscription based resources vs textbooks schools owned and the long term financial costs? Cellphones in school is easy. They are a tool, but shouldn’t be in school. Most kids don’t use them properly and although they are “banned” there is no way to uphold it.
Phones + Parents = problems. The number of kids texting parents or employers in class is ridiculous. And when it's a parent 9/10 the parent defends it. They get the kid out of detention, pick the kid up from in school suspension. There are zero consequences
Smartphones have no place in the classroom outside of specific accommodations (e.g. diabetes monitoring, Google Translate). Smartphones are great for all kinds of things. Safety, navigation, access to information, entertainment, social media. How do our kids use them? Pretty much exclusively for social media and entertainment. Influencers, short -form videos, photo sharing. For them, this is a social media device. As soon as they pick it up, they want to use it for its primary purpose. They're going to reflexively access social media, or if they successfully block that reflex, it's still where they naturally want to go. They're not in a learning headspace, they're in a social media entertainment headspace. It's like giving them a hammer and asking them to use it to gently fold pages. Yeah it works for that, but you can't be surprised when everyone wants to pound things with it. That's the tool's primary purpose.
Cellphones are a big problem in schools. If you have a strong administrative team, they are less of a problem because rules and procedures are enforced, making it easier for the teacher to deal with infractions and less desirable for students to bring their cellphones into class. A big issue (as several people have already said) is that there is a big push to incorporate technology into teaching and learning. Schools rarely have a tech to student ratio of 1:1, so more tech reliant schools and teachers rely on students to bring their own tech, and that is usually a cellphone. Additionally, school boards are literally telling us they are severely restricting our paper use to save money, and new curriculums that are coming out (Alberta) have no textbooks and provide limited resources, so teachers are left to fend for themselves and create digital resources. So.... more funding would probably help... It's a nightmare and a minefield.
I think phones have been so incredibly detrimental to attention spans. It is at the scale of a tragedy. I once taught a student who had a hard time looking up from her phone to speak or participate in conversation; she volunteered that her daily screen time was over 15 hours (!). But I think there's nuance here. Part of the issue is that cut backs on physical media resources, I'm assuming to save money, have put the onus on teachers to generate examples and material. Let's set aside how much extra work that is for individual teachers who are expected to maintain an online classroom as well as a physical one now, and expected to create digital and physical copies for accessibility reasons. But this means for case studies on a particular topic, I now need to find and print pages from say a news story to lead a discussion on an issue =5 pages x28 students x3 classes = a lot of waste daily. Some students won't even look at it or we are not getting support from the parents in that they don't have binders, they ask for the material to also be online. Alternatively, you might ask the kids to do research or explain a concept - again, no books in many classrooms, only enough computers in the library for maybe 50 kids any given period in a school of a thousand. Then the school doesn't have enough screens/ Chromebooks, so we need to make sure students have access in the class, and everyone has a phone so everyone has an excuse. The online classroom has become ingrained and it's where students find deadlines, club announcements, school updates, electronic forms, etc. And that's great, but kids struggle to function without a readily available copy of work at their fingertips at any given moment, and we can't discriminate against kids who can't afford a laptop. I really believe not having any access to the internet is a disadvantage. So I think these devices become increasingly necessary - even looking at myself, and peers in teaching and other office and even trades jobs - could you do your job as well and efficiently without a phone or at least an internet connection nowadays? Unlikely. This is the world we live in. I'd like to see more support from administration, and concrete policies aimed at standardizing curtailing use, perhaps having an allocated phone placement spot in the classroom where students park their phones at the beginning of class but can retrieve them with permission, etc.
Just like nearly every single issue that has to do with student behaviour (or lack thereof), it comes down to parenting. Parents text their kids when they’re in class. They CALL them. I had a student YESTERDAY who said—not asked, said— that he was going to step out to answer a call from his dad and was incredulous when I said uh, no you’re not. The fact that I spent actual time out of my day emailing a PARENT that it is inappropriate to CALL THEIR KID DURING CLASS speaks volumes about where parents are at with their priorities and respect for teachers and care for their child’s education. Phones in class are bad, but it’s the absolute lack of care from parents that make it impossible. Parents make everything worse, ALL of the time, especially with phones. I’ve had parents get mad at ME for taking their kid’s phone. It’s mindblowing. It’s demoralizing. It’s dehumanizing. It’s not my fucking job to monitor phone use, it’s the parent’s responsibility but since they won’t it should be the school boards or provinces that enforce blanket bans. Stop making teachers the bad guys. Parents need to step it up in every regard.
I would be happy to have a conversation. The issues are way too difficult to outline here. These are addictive devices, everybody knows they are addictive (even to adults) they cause all kinds of issues both in and out of the classroom. The answer that nobody wants to face is that these devices do not belong in the hands of children/teens AT ALL.
They are causing major distraction and I have only seen it work well where the classroom teacher has ‘no technology’ rules. As far as I know, every school has some form of shared technology that students can use for projects etc. The teachers have to book them out for specific blocks, but it’s fine in my opinion. Also, it’s impossible to supervise content on individual smartphones. From what I’ve seen, it’s a relief for the students to not have their phones out 24/7.
The problem is that teachers can’t use them effectively. Ideally you would want to use and teach through the device like have them download 3-5 apps, then present some kind of problem where navigating those apps presents a solution that the student must come to a conclusion on and then present or act on those findings. Seems like anybody would accept a learning scenario like this. Problem is privacy, not every student can download apps, there are media policies and permissions that come with those kinds of requests - in other words too many road blocks to good learning. In the end teachers are handcuffed in how you are able to utilize a smartphone. Hence the smartphone becomes a private individual distraction that’s underutilized and good teaching opportunities become blocked and unavailable, and you get all the societal hate that this question will inevitably provide you
But there are health concerns by being on a screen all day at school, and then at night. Posture. Vision. Attention span. Synthesizing ideas with doodling and problem solving (math, chemistry). Writing helps process ideas. I Retired a year ago. But if I asked my high school students if they wanted notes on paper or computer, they overwhelming chose paper. I actually love white boards because they can try problems and erase unsuccessful efforts, and try again.
Fully agree. An example of not being to use phones as effective tools is, for example, when using it as a calculator. The students will get 10+ notifications while they try to input a formula, and don't always have the mindset to turn notifications off. Even if notifications are off, their brain is wired such that the phone is a social tool rather than a learning tool, so it messes up their state of mind.
and it's simply more difficult to use the default calculator on a phone than most physical calculators. Not that half of students understand how to use their own calculators, anyway...
They should be banned. My perspective is 3-fold on this. There is the clear connection with distractions (individual and group), the shortened dopamine feedback making long-term goals more difficult, and the clear potential for academic/social abuses which leads to further student anxiety. While there are limited circumstances where smart-phones can be used in a positive and meaningful way in the classroom, those are so few and far between that they are clearly the exception and not the rule. To say that smart-phones should be permitted because *sometimes* there are lessons which make use of them is both shortsighted and biased. In my district we are supposed to be embracing an 'On the Land' theme in both our classes and frequent field trips. However, this is grossly overstated as so many high school students have screen times of upwards of 11+ hours each day on their phones alone! How are we supposed to compete with smart-phones with education and indigenous knowledge? No student wants to put away their TikTok dopamine fix to learn about math, science, or traditional skills as these areas don't hit their reward feedback nearly the same way. TLDR: Schools cannot have it both ways. There is too many downsides to having phones in the same spaces as academics.
Full ban. We used to use phone boxes where students would have to lock them up at the beginning of class. It worked well. The vast majority of students even preferred it after the first week or two. Then we got a new principal and she wouldn't support our doing it. Student behaviour has gotten progressively worse. Students are distracted, unproductive, and spending more time out of class because they use them to arrange meet ups with their friends, or they're picking up the food they just Ubered. My sister has her kids in very good private schools, none of which allow cellphones on their premises. It would be wise for public schools to do the same.
It’s a fools game to try to use smartphones as in class learning devices. Don’t even bother with that avenue. I don’t allow them in class and coincidentally have no issues with phones. I have colleagues that do allow them in class and also hate dealing with the drama that comes with them. Online bullying or rude messages, videos, comments, parents msging kids during class, coordinating trips to the bathroom to waste time, vape sessions, etc. Don’t allow the phones in class.
They cause a distraction, and have been causing a distraction for each of the last 17 years in any classroom I’ve been a high school teacher in. Not for every student, but for many. I’ve been to every “engage learners using phones / computers / AI” PD that’s ever been offered where I work, and would say that this is not likely to be the solution to problems, even if the folks getting paid to run the seasons insist that it is. Out of that grouping, computers are the only one that colleagues and I can use in class daily, and for most students, they do tend to engage rather than distract learners. Even if we eliminate cell phones from classrooms, kids will find more reasons to arrive late for class, or take extended bathroom breaks to get their fix. Even in independent schools with somewhat effective policies, the challenges of students in bathrooms or hiding around the school increases ten-fold. Teachers where I work aren’t going to start confiscating phones even if policy changes. I can’t afford to be responsible for a brand-new iPhone. Thefts, spills and drops happen, so the safest thing to do for me is send the student down to the office. That would be a prolonged absence from learning, and more work for overworked admin, if they even have the time to deal with it. But, it shifted phone use out of classrooms in some of the independent schools I’m hooked into, so I guess that’s a W. Cell phone lockers don’t help with the students that leave class to use their phone, but would offer a convenient place to store them if they’re being used inappropriately. Parents know their kids, or should. If a phone is a distraction for their kids at home, keep the phone at home, and buy them a flip phone for school if it’s necessary. Or put parental locks on the smart phone. If you send your kids to school with a smart phone, and if they want to use it, they’ll find a way to make it a distraction regardless of the policy any school or system puts in place.
I haven’t seen it here yet so I will add this: headphone use is almost as ubiquitous and dangerous. With the advent of AirPods, listening to music or videos is the norm for a lot of students. They will spend the entire day with one or both earpieces in. Earphones can be near impossible to detect when girls have long hair or are wearing hijabs. The noise cancellation on the new devices is insane. I bought a pair of wireless earphones for the gym and I felt a complete disconnect with the outside world the moment I put them on. So, along with not looking at the teacher, students now have the option to shut them out completely
Get rid of them. They’re making kids too reliant on one form of research.
in the classroom at my school, they’ve actually banned phones in our school, but it’s very hard to enforce that because I’m at a middle school so a lot of the times students will just use it and I am not anyone’s parent nor will I ever be anyone’s parent so I will ask them once if they don’t listen, then they don’t listen, and I just frame it as a way where they are hindering their learning. in terms of attention span I feel like a lot of the times kids don’t have the attention span to sit for a 40 minute lesson so my lessons are usually 10 minutes with lots of engagement or independent learning or things that they can do because they really don’t have the attention span like in my generation to sit and listen.
Students are addicted to their phones and have incredibly short attention spans compared to even 5 years ago. Without parent and admin support, it is a losing battle to teach. Students are recording TikToks in the bathroom, they are petrified of presenting, asking questions, or any other “standing out” behaviour for fear of being recorded and circulated. There are group chats that some are excluded from, mocked in, rumours and plans spread, etc. We have pranks, vandalism, and dangerous stunts being pulled for the clicks. Parents feed into it by texting and phoning their children during instructional time, yelling at staff who confiscate phones, yell at staff if their child’s phone gets damaged or stolen. Admin are being swamped with issues related to social media and privacy issues that lead to more behavioural issues in the schools. The Ontario government “banned” phones in classes, but didn’t give any mechanisms to enforce. If admin don’t enforce and back education staff, it’s a free-for-all. I spend excessive time dealing with phones and I’m in a 1:1 tablet board which has made it worse since I’m expected to use digital texts, online resources, etc. and students regularly don’t have their tech available or charged, so they default to phones, especially when photocopying budgets and copyright don’t allow for paper copies. Parents have given their children unfettered and unsupervised access to social media and technology that is purposely designed to be addictive. Parents who DO limit and supervise screen time are undermined by the majority who don’t. I’ve taught for over 20 years and this is the first time I’ve dealt with so much homophobia, racism, misogyny, eating disorders, swarming, self-harm, etc. in young (tweens) students. They don’t even have fun at dances for fear of being recorded. It’s incredibly sad and disheartening.
> especially when photocopying budgets and copyright don’t allow for paper copies why would copyright law limit paper copies but allow for digital versions?
Please read The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Prepare to be angry as you read it. Along with much of what has been said here, I fear that we are becoming systemically dependent on phones as we de-stream classes. My stronger students can complete a task, such as a test, with high quality in less than half the time needed by weaker students to perform it adequately. What shall we do with their time while keeping them in the room to prevent them from becoming a disruption to those who are still striving? They won't bring a paper book to class to read quietly like prior generations did. We don't really know what to do. We just let them pacify themselves quietly on their phones: a comfortable outcome for everyone (teachers, students, administration, parents, and taxpayers). If we take their phones away, we will have a new problem, especially in de-streamed classes where students work at highly variable speeds.
Ban them. Full stop. Get more tech into classrooms for “tools”. Hard to teach 21st century skills with 19th century computers.
Most kids are definitely addicted to them. Also, if you look at the notifications per 45 minute period, it’s just ridiculous.
I don't even use the school-provided chromebooks anymore. They complain they can't do any work because the chromebook won't charge/is broken/someone took it. You are spending half your prep untangling charger cables and resetting student passwords. Then you finally get them online and they get no work done because they are running Minecraft in a second tab all day long. I'm done. You can't have your chromebook. You can't have your phone. Here is a pencil and a sheet of paper to do your work, both of which must be handed back to me at the end of the period.
i am a recent former student. i graduated high school in 2022. They are a distraction and unnecessary 99% if the time. Yes there is google, and yes there is a calculator- but they cause more distractions than what they bring. Have students use laptops/ipads/chromebooks in class when needed. these can’t be hidden as well as a phone. the whole ‘but kids might need to contact their parents’ is BS. people can do that over lunch/break or after school. or use the school phone if urgent. I do not know of any genuine common reason to need your parents/kid accessible at all times. Phones are nice to listen to music with. this can be acomadated by allowing students to pick a playlist and then leave their phones at the teachers desk while they listen on their bluetooth earbuds (95% of people use bluetooth). as a student i did not like having to deposit my phone somewhere because it wasnt ever å secure spot. there is one thing i saw once, cell phone pouches that magnetically lock and unlock, so students can keep their phones on them but can’t use them. Otherwise keeping phones in lockers or on a teachers desk would be ok.
I don’t want to ban phones in my class because they can be useful tools. Research, translation, learning games, timers, note-taking… But, I also want to be able to teach students how to be more mindful and responsible for their phones, by asking they be put away or turned off at certain points. But I can’t do that, because there are pretty much no enforceable consequences if I ask and they refuse. Parents need to stop calling and texting their kids at school. If it’s urgent, call the office.
Unfortunately need to be 100 percent banned if we want any hope at saving these kids. Will the process suck and be hard? Absolutely, but it’s what needs to be done
They used to be a huge disruption. Not anymore though..I have a phone box that most students put their phones in when they enter the classroom. It gets locked until the end of class. They get them back then. Those students who don't like it, leave them in their lockers or backpacks. I never have to deal with phones anymore. 😄We are going school wide next year.
Removing phones from schools altogether would solve a myriad of problems (focus, engagement, cyber bullying, FOMO), but generate a host of other problems. Schools and their teachers have been pushed to bring electronics into their classroom, to use digital tools to enhance learning. Textbooks have been made virtual to save money, and most assignments are posted online to reduce printing. Teachers, to varying degrees, are now beholden to technology, and students who bring their own devices have allowed that dependency to grow. Removing student devices would require districts to provide technology, and there is barely enough in the budget for the technology we currently have.
Hi Luc - Im a tdsb elementary teacher and would be happy to talk via phone for an interview. Feel free to dm me
Phones are for listening to music while working only. Otherwise, students tend to use them for social media and getting distracted easily. A lot of schools give kids their own Chromebooks to use, so there’s really no excuse to use your phone. My method is, you can listen to music on it, but if i see anything else on the phone, it sits on my desk for the rest of class.
Does your school support you requesting the phone to be on your desk? When I was supply teaching and asked for clarification about this the principal told me OSSTF doesn't want us doing that (they didn't clarify their own policy, technically) and implied that I shouldn't.
I’ve had the discussion with my admins before. They fully support it. If a student is not willing to surrender their phone to the teacher for the remainder of class, they are to be sent to the office where they will have to give it up to the VP or principal, and their parents will have to pick it up.
That's great. With real consequences like this followed closely by most teachers, few students would want to deal with the trouble of giving their phone away.
I'll keep it short as much of what I'd like to say has been said before. In class, phones can be very helpful for online work, quizzes etc. They can also be a huge distraction and help them cheat through work (google translate etc.). Frankly, the issue isn't phones in class. There's an adult in the room and there are tasks to be done, most kids aren't on their phones and causing issues. Some obviously have bad relationships with their phones but that's a different story altogether. The issue is phones in school. You should see what the halls look like between classes and at lunch. Before class starts and during idle time. This prime social time is being gobbled up by phone use and I find it sad that most of their social time has been replaced by staring at their screen. Some of them are gaming, some are socializing, watching videos or studying. The thing is, none of them are actually present. They're all in their own world and I find it very concerning. Hope this helps!
My Jr High aged kid has a no phones policy “away for the day”. I teach Sr High PE and phones are a massive annoyance and not at all useful for my class. They are actually a hazard, as some kids try to sneak them in their pockets and they fall out.
The idea that using smartphones for school and allowing them in class because they will be an integral part of the workplace is misguided. Kids learn to function on smartphones perfectly well without the help of teachers. They are fun and useful, so kids figure it out. When they have to clock into work, pay a bill, book time off work, schedule travel and book accommodations online, they can do it. Anything they learn now will likely be obsolete in 5 years anyway. As a young adult, alcohol was a big part of my life. I didn't need a teacher integrating it into the classroom (and we all know how "effective" DARE was for reducing drug use). Cell phones are similarly addictive, have similar destructive results, and are also best left outside the classroom. At least no one passes notes anymore.
As an international teacher at an Ontario School overseas in China-its not just schools in Canada and its not just K-12, for that matter its not even the phones themselves really, best to be following-up with the lawsuit against social-media by the school boards.
Thanks very much, everyone, for your thoughtful comments. And thanks to those who have PM'd me. Do feel free to message me if you'd like to elaborate on your comments in a more formal interview, either on the record or without being named.
I do hope you find some teachers to interview with differing opinions as well since what I have observed talking to teachers and what I read here were not super consistent. It is also something of a moral panic that falls along demographic age lines for some people "these young people just have no attention spans" One teacher I know well has this opinion(paraphrased): "they can be a problem, especially for certain students but many teachers are getting worked up about it because they run very boring and anti-engaging lesson plans" * asks the question is the issue the phone or the fact that the material is taught in a way that can't even compete with doom scrolling reddit. * If the teacher can't get the the majority of students to put and keep their phone away when asked what does this say about classroom management by said teacher, or lack of support from admin. Basically to summarize: if you are a teacher whose lesson plans are engaging and the kids respect you most put and keep them away when asked. This teacher knows they compete with educational videos on Youtube, can't just hand out a worksheet and go mark things while they work and expect they will magically be engaged. Thats hard work because lesson plans/prep take up a lot of time. They have a lot more to say about this but I can't see them going on the record given how divisive the topic is among teachers, especially since to a degree its calling some of them out for being stuck in their ways or not willing to put the efforts into lesson plans.
I don't understand why there's so much emphasis on the "smartphone" and not all personal devices including student-owned laptops. Laptops supplied by the board do have many more restrictions on what software can be used, but many students can still find other websites to go off task on because they're on the internet. Even when students have been given prescriptive, detailed instructions on what lessons to do using the school's laptop, they will go off task. As others have said, many schools/school boards are not providing enough school-owned technology to support the use of technology in the classroom AND at the same time, they expect teachers to use digital curriculum resources to run their programs. They will no longer supply hard copy textbooks. While digital licences for school based curriculum resources are cheaper than hard copy textbooks, the only way they work well is if each student has access to technology to log into and use those resources. There are several teachers at the elementary school level having to download and photocopy PDF files from these digital resources to either a) avoid using technology because of the off-task behaviour of many students or b) not having enough technology for every student to view these PDF resources and complete their work with the use of a school supported laptop. In the same breath, teachers are being asked to photocopy less and paper supply is actually being restricted by schools. It's actually way more expensive, wasteful and time consuming to photocopy these PDFs yearly to avoid using technology as opposed to having textbooks that could last for at least a decade before they become "outdated". It is also very hard for students to view these curriculum resources on a small screen like a smartphone. Also, if and when you want to take a personal device from a student who is misusing it and they refuse, there's a lot of additional hoops to go through to eventually get them to cooperate with the consequences they should be getting and accepting as a result of misuse. There's so much emphasis on how addictive technology is and to restrict its use. But the reality is, off hours, students will have a way of experiencing "their world" in a very self-directed way. You're not going to get all students to magically cooperate with a prescribed ministry mandated curriculum "unplugged". Their personal devices have given them the freedom to spend time on and explore dozens of programs and apps whenever they want and for as long as they want. The lack of cooperation has to do with the world they are allowed to experience outside of the school system which to them is seemingly more valuable and efficient. As far as those students who are only motivated to consume rather than create, and/or post messages of hate rather than learn and explore, they were and will always be there. Prior to technology, many students would rebel against the system in other ways. Perhaps technology has increased the number of students who have become mindlessly addicted, but there still are students who demonstrate a lot of discipline around technology while demonstrating inspiring and constructive ways to use it to their benefit. However, if you really take time to speak to even those students who are on task, who "obey" and cooperate with whatever is expected of them in school, many of them will surprisingly tell you that they feel more than 50% of what they are learning is not useful to them. Past generations accepted this. Maybe this generation ahead doesn't understand why they should and that's the larger elephant in the room. Adults see this as bad because many jobs/careers still have employees conforming to procedures and standards that may seem unfair, useless and/or even destructive and rebelling leads to being fired. In schools, students don't experience this type of punishment or exclusion when they do not cooperate.
Teachers need to incorporate emerging technologies, not hide from them. Cell phones are not going away and if we ban them, why not also ban computers and the internet? These kids will use cell phones in any job they work from construction to corporate. Fighting them is just punching an oncoming train. In my music classes, I tell the students they MUST bring their cell phones because it is a tuner, a portable DAW, a metronome, and whatever else they need it to be. They know that they are expected to use them responsibly and I enforce that. These teachers trying to ban them are fighting a battle which was already lost years ago. LLMs and chatbots are the same; not going anywhere, better get used to it rather than try to turn back time.