Cell Phones In The Classroom

[bookworm51485]

I say let the kids have the cell phones, as long as they silence them during class. Honestly, while I was in Jr High, and in High School, there were two bomb threats during school hours. We were rushed to the meeting area, we weren't told what was happening and had no way of communicating with anyone.

My little brother is now in Jr. High and my parents bought him a cell phone which he carries with him at ALL times. It is true that some kids abuse their priviledges, but that goes for adults as well. I digress, my little brother is responsible, doesn't use it in class and only uses it to communicate with my parents. We live almost three miles away from the school, no buses, he has to walk home.

I like the fact that my little brother can call for help should he ever need it.

That's the main reason most of the kids in my high school had cell phones. We went to a school that was far away from where most people lived and that took a long time to get to (average travel time was between 1 and 3 hours). For me, it involved taking a bus, then getting on a train, then another bus and if I missed that bus you'd have to get back on a train to take another bus. For many others it was a lot more complicated. The cell phones were so the parents could keep track of their kids and know where they were if they were late coming home or so the kids could get a hold of their parents in case something happened. I know a couple of times the train shut down or the buses stopped running. In one case, the causeway that connects the key my school was on to the main part of Florida got shut down so a lot of the kids got stuck at the school or on buses in between the school and off of the key. In my junior year, I started a research project/internship with a doctor someone connected me to and that made my schedule very irregular. I spent a lot of time walking alone and catching many buses alone, sometimes after dark. One night we were there going on 10 and I had to get on the metro and then another bus. Without a phone, my mom would have had no idea where I was or if I'd been kidnapped. I didn't have one before that point and even outside of this project there were many incidents where things would happen and my mom would have no idea where I was or what was going on.

If they ban cell phones from schools, a lot of parents and kids will lose this connection. I know cell phones didn't always exist and people made do without them, but you can't deny that they've made life better in ways.

[Guest Pink Lace]

Ahahaha just yesterday I was a monitor in mass. It was our patron saint's feast day and all the students had to attend mass. There were tons of kids who were doing bad things like tugging on the girl's hair, snatching bags (playfully), flicking people's noses, kicking, slapping, reading comic books, combing hair, doing their homework, etc.

I repriminded one girl for writing on her notebook and she was like "erm I'm a reporter for the school paper and I'm writing an article about the mass." She was the only one who had a semi- legit excuse.

Cell phone use in our school is the same; of about 20 you catch using it when/where they aren't allowed, maybe one person could have a slightly legitimate excuse. Some have even been caught texting during exams... That's why there is a blanket ban, there were just too many incidents. It's easy to blame it on the school, somehow it's never the student's fault.

Ideally there shouldn't even be a need for a monitor. It's not like these kids have never been to mass, they all know how they should behave. It's the same with cell phones. They know what not to do but it seems they cannot be trusted.

As for the person who mentioned using the school library to surf, that's too bad but as you said youself students abuse their privileges A LOT. Most libraries have a ban on all such sites and for good reason. Rules are rules, if they gave people an exception then students would be surfing Naruto there all day saying "oh we are studying Japanese/Asian culture." LOL. It sucks for the good students but a few bad ones are always there to ruin things for others.

[Guest Melody Fate]

Yes, there are payphones. Not, they don;t really work. No they WON'T let em use the office phone. Nurses won't believe I'm sick unless I throw up on her desk or something.

And fuck no "Did I have my sweater?" is NOT an emergancy. Bleeding profusly IS.

There was once a day when a buch of people got caught in the school elevater which causes the fire gons to go off. Teachers thought kids where pulling the alarms until someone in the elevater finally got reception and called for help.

Get it?

And really, no one here is saying anything differant then I have so really, I don't even understand why everyone seems so argumentative.

What I GET is that these schools I'm hearing about in this thread needs to be looked into right. this. second. You're making it sound like to not have a cellphone is risking death or dismemberment. Since I've always known you to be honest, I must assume this is true and if this is the case, the school should be shut down. Not tomorrow, not next week, NOW.

A nurse who won't believe a student is sick is not something to be resolved with a cell phone. It's something that the students have to tell the parents about and the parents have to get together and agree this is wrong and that they want it stopped.

The school assuming any fire alarm is a student prank is not a "Well we let them have cellphones and all is good!" situation. I knew kids that were caught red-handed pulling fire alarms in school and every single time, the fire department still had to come out, the school had to be evacuated, and the elevators checked by the fire deparment. Especially the elevators, because they're the biggest death traps of all. Any time an alarm goes off in a public building it must be evacuated and the fire department must come out. The scenes you described tell me that your school isn't alarmed to the fire department and that is illegal.

You indicate that the school would do nothing to help if a child was bleeding. That's not a cellphone solution, that's a "This school is completely and utterly f-ed up and needs to be closed Right. Now. And not reopened until it's been completely revamped and restaffed with human beings, and brought up to legal code specifications... like fire alarms that are wired into the fire department.

My older niece works in a juvenile detention center where none of the kids are allowed much of crap and society has pretty much deemed these children to be next to useless. Yet no one would ever let a child bleed and not get help. No one would ignore a fire alarm, even though in a place like that pulling fire alarms is probably something every one of those kids has done and would do again. In this day of the sue-happy world, she tells me she has to worry that if a kid bites her and chips his tooth on one of her bones, she could very well lose her job and end up in court being sued.

We talk here on AFF how the world has become so, "We must protect the children!" to the point where if children come here, they don't get into trouble, it's AFF. In a world where kids are seen as so "always innocent even when guilty" how the hell are our schools allowed to treat children like they're worse than criminals? Even in prisions for ADULTS the guards wouldn't watch someone bleed profusively and not do anything. I'm pretty much being told that in schools, with children, we treat them worse than we treat criminals. That's not right.

The situations that I've seen described in this thread are lawyer fodder if I've ever seen it. Not paging a child from class when her mother is dying? Not having schools wired up to the fire department? Sick kids not being allowed to go home? Kids bleeding profusively being ignored?

If the school is in such a crisis situation that the kids have to have a constant outside line to the world, least they risk life and limb, then the problem isn't cellphones, the problem is that parents are sending their kids off to a potential death trap, and apparently don't care enough to do anything about it. Either that or the kids aren't willing to say something about it to their parents.

Part of the reason why I didn't have kids is because I knew I'd be a rotten mother. However, even I wouldn't send my kid off to a school that is so cold and calouse as to risk the lives of their students for apparently no reason other than lack of compassion. I'd never dream of sending a child to a school where a cellphone could very well be the difference between life and death for her or one of her classmates. That's utterly and completely wrong. Cellphones can malfunction. Imagine how well that would go over? She bleed to death because the school wouldn't help her and her cellphone broke."

[DarkCabaret]

I didn't read everything posted here but I do have to say that no kids shouldn't have phones in school. I know tow incidents I'd like to regail you all with:

1) the only time it is okay is like when my friend Jenna's mom was in the hospital and basically dying. She had to keep her phone on her incase something happened. Without her being there. Then she got he rphone stolen from another student!

2) A girl in my Drama class was playing games on her phone whilst the teacher was lecturing us on being there on time and she got startled when the teacher yelled out and demanded to have her repeat the last statement. It fell from her hands and broke.

Kids don't need phones in school. Yes I was one of the kids sitting there texting a friend in a another class but I knew when my phone was and wasn't ok. Like during study hall. It's all well and good but in the middle of English it is NOT ok to have it.

[Guest Duchess]

I am a teacher and I have to agree that it is disruptive and disrespectful to have a cell phone go off, or have a student whip it out to start texting a friend, during class.

We do not have a rule about students carrying cell phones; our rule is specifically that the cell phone must be off and out of site. All phone calls, emergency and otherwise, that need to reach the student during school hours MUST be made through our front desk.

Legally, we are not allowed to take cell phones while representing the school (financial liability). If we, as an individual teacher, want to take responsibility for the object, we can, but then if anything happens to it, we are responsible for replacing it, personally.

We can, however, ask students to leave the building if they refuse to follow our widely posted and agreed upon rules (I work for a charter school for students who have been removed form the public systems for one reason or another, so our rules are quite strict).

Our rules permit a student to have their cell phone for the time before and after school, when their parents/guardians can't reach them through us, but provide for a quiet and uninterrupted day for us, at school.

[Guest mykell]

There's a huge difference between having a cell phone and using it.

If students want a dead weight in their pockets during class, who gives a #*%&. If it's off during class, as it should be, students should be allowed to carry them just as they're allowed to carry any other hunk of metal and plastic.

The rules at Duchess's school make absolute sense. All [elementary and secondary] schools should have rules like that.

[Kyouryoku Senshi]

I think students should be allowed to have cell phones at school, but they should have them 'Out of sight and out of mind'. In other words, turned off or on vibrate until break or lunch. A lot of people have them these days especially in cases of emergency.