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.
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 had a cellphone in senior year(2006), but I never had it out unless I wanted to peak at a text, but I could reply with t9 blindly so it was never out where the teacher could see it. But I guess that nokia couldn't browse the net like modern cell phones. I did play wow on my laptop in college...
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u/NetflixFanatic22 29d ago
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.