Every fall, every teacher must fight a few key battles with a new class of students. In my classroom, one battle is over bathroom use. Another, over assigned seating. A third, over side conversations, especially during the first few weeks of classroom community building. Increasingly, though, the biggest battle that never seems to end is over phone use.
This year, the Pew Research Center reported that 9 out of 10 American adults own a smartphoneWhile most of us can remember what life was like before our national addiction to smartphones, most teens today are too young to remember that time; however, smartphone ownership among 13- to 17-year-olds It almost reflects adultsIn addition, smartphone use among teenagers has been a Growing obstacle to learning.
My colleague and I teach the same group of 11th graders at our Title I high school in Oakland; she teaches history and I teach science. Given the size of this group, we are able to build strong relationships with these 60 students over the 40 weeks we spend together.
At the beginning of the year, we noticed that most students were very attached to their phones. So, in the middle of last year, we decided to investigate how much time our students spent in front of a screen. While we didn’t expect it, the results of our research baffled us. Children read off numbers like “8 hours and 43 minutes a day” without shame. The highest of the group? Just under 12 hours a day. The lowest? An admirable 2 hours and 50 minutes. Weekly? The vast majority totaled more than 40 hours—more than an entire work week spent staring at a screen.
As teachers, this is not only exhausting but also demoralizing. 77% of public schools While there is no regulation at our high school regarding cell phone use during school hours, this is extremely important. controversial issue at my school and at other schools across the country. As School safety concerns rise amid campus shootingsParents are also concerned about not being able to communicate with their children. However, while this is a valid concern for many parents, teachers are also battling the signs of Poor mental health, decreased commitment and in general in general Lack of socialization with peers in our students.
As a teacher facing an audience that simply cannot stop using their phones, the diminishing attention spans of my students take a toll on me. When I talk to other staff members at my school, most people want a school-wide phone policy. Many academic cohorts at my school have their own policies with varying degrees of success, but some teachers are adamant about implementing policies. Teachers who do not want policies often cite a lack of support as a major reason – this could be due to an unresponsive or unsupportive administration, a lack of clear school-wide consequences, or a lack of consistency across classrooms.
Each of these factors leaves teachers fighting the same battles every day. Not only does it take away from our total teaching time, but it also affects our relationships with students, the only thing keeping many of us in the classroom in one of the most difficult times of the year. Districts with the lowest salaries but the hardest to teach in the Bay Area.
Even if you maintain clear structures in your classroom, you have to re-teach them every day because your students enter seven different spaces throughout the day with different policies and expectations before you see them again. Without a school-wide policy, it’s not only confusing for students, but there’s no real buy-in without a chain of consequences that extend beyond a specific classroom.
Displaced landscape
In my experience as a teacher, the classroom landscape was distinctly different before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the famous Zoom year, phones were less of an issue; students were generally receptive to being redirected, and there was a general culture of understanding how to behave in the classroom. Often, when students were done with their work or needed a break, they would chat with me about their weekends, telling me about events in their lives, like a morning spent fishing with their father or their little sister’s upcoming quinceañera. Sometimes, they would check out a book or talk to their classmates. These moments were priceless to me as their teacher, and these little check-ins made going to work a joy.
Now, the whole landscape has changed. I’ve noticed that students, in general, lack the mental fortitude and self-regulation needed to put down their phones. Every day, I battle social media, online gambling, sports games, texting friends, and everything else the internet has to offer — and, for the most part, it’s me against my group of 28 students. Most of them seem to understand that it’s an expectation I have in my class, but the same general understanding of smartphone etiquette is no longer ingrained in school culture or in this generation of students.
Instead, kids see phone use as something that isn’t a problem; it’s just something everyone does. This creates a barrier between me and my students and highlights many factors that are driving teachers away from the field, such as increased workload and mental health. Additionally, because of the controversy around smartphones, we feel unappreciated and invalidated in our efforts to encourage kids to participate in our classrooms and create a positive learning community.
Managing expectations
Due to the combination of inconsistencies in school policies and excessive smartphone use among my students, addressing this issue has made my experience as a teacher incredibly difficult, especially since I often spend hours on campus without interacting with another adult. When an issue impacts the way you teach and has become an accepted norm among students, it can be difficult to continue investing energy into the effort when you feel like you are alone in a losing battle.
Although there is clear progress in policy around smartphone regulation in states like CaliforniaThere is still no clarity on how these policies will look in schools with variable access to resourcesCurrent political movements, such as All4Edraise questions about the funding provided to Title I schools to maintain such policies.
As I settle into this school year, I am hopeful that my school will make some progress in developing a strong, consistent policy that applies to all classrooms. However, as our The budget has been cut significantlyAs we further reduce the resources and staff available to address phone use in and around classrooms, I have adjusted my expectations in the hope that there will be progress on this issue in the future.
Once again, teachers are tasked with solving society's problems without resources or support. Smartphone use is an issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later in schools so that this generation of children can develop and focus on the skills they need to succeed in the world.
