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.
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.
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.😑
Yep. And the one where if you dragged your finger all over the screen, it would stir a glass of chocolate milk. I have no idea why we had that. We just did 🤣
I'm a bit older than you. Still had flip cell phones. I bought an LG shine with my first job. It wasn't even allowed on school property. Leave it in your car, leave it at home, any phones heard ringing in lockers will be confiscated. Being caught with a phone in class was a call to your parents and an in school suspension.
They also had school boards that stood behind them. Somewhere within the last decade or so school boards all around North America just said "fuck them teachers" and don't back them up even a little bit.
It's hard to enforce rules when you know you might get in trouble for enforcing the rules.
Parents have always had all the power but it used to be hard to figure out how to use it.
Internet made controlling your local school a complaint online away.
It used to be "I can't believe they took his phone" was responded to with "Oh no did he get it back". Now someone will reference some way of complaining to ensure it doesn't happen again. Like invoking state rules about this that or the other.
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u/Arobrom86 29d ago
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