Unbanning the Ubiquitous Phone

Some people I like and respect are upset about Mayor de Blasio following through on his promise to end the phone ban. I have never been in favor of the phone ban. It's 2014, I have a phone, and I don't remember exactly when I gave my kid one, but she carried it for years in school. When I found out she was using it in class I turned off her internet access and paid T-Mobile five bucks a month to restrict her usage during school hours. For a few years she was only able to communicate with me and her mom during school hours.

But she's my kid, and I wanted to be able to communicate with her in case of an emergency. Calling a school office and hoping for the best, considering decades of failing to get messages in school buildings, didn't seem a great option.

I realize that not every parent is as cruel and heartless as I am. One reason is that I regularly see kids take out their phones and use them. If I didn't stop them they'd probably do it all the time. On the other hand, I do stop them. My eyes are now attuned to kids with their hands under their desks, which more often than not indicates phone use. Mostly, it just takes a look and the phone goes back in a bag.

But there's no putting every phone in a bag. I know that there's been a business boom in scanning schools, with trucks and bodegas charging kids a buck a day for phone storage. I wouldn't want to pay twenty bucks a month so my kid could store her phone, and I wouldn't want my students, who don't have a whole lot of money, to have to pay that.

Phones in class are a nuisance, particularly with some determined kids, but it's part of the job. They just aren't going away. It's my job to deal with it. Sometimes I deal with it better than other times. Certain kids just slide back. If they didn't have phones they'd have other distractions, and I'd have to deal with them instead.

The cardinal rule in my ESL classes is that we speak only English. Most of my kids speak the same language, so that's a very, very difficult rule to enforce. I spend a whole lot more energy and time reinforcing that than dealing with phones. Imagine if you were in, say, Korea with twenty-five Americans and some lunatic told you you could speak only Korean. That's pretty much how my kids view me. But if I can enforce an all-English policy, I can enforce a phone ban.

I don't like to confiscate phones, and I've done so on only a handful of occasions. I don't allow kids to talk on the phone, ever. On one occasion, a student's phone rang, he picked it up, and he began to speak in a foreign language. This grieved me deeply. His mommy had to come to the school and pick it up at the end of the week. Another time a kid took his phone to the trailer bathroom and played music with it. He spent some time phoneless too.

Once I was subbing for an absent AP. Back then the iPod touch was a luxury item. I politely told a young man to put his away three times. On the fourth time I had a dean come and confiscate it. When I went to the dean's office to write it up the boy's mom was there. She screamed at me. She said it was his "enjoyment," and said she hoped he was never in my class. I offered no argument.

The phones are a pain in the neck, but that's only because our kids are a pain in the neck. It's their job to test us, and it's our job to deal with it. I'll be at work in a few hours, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do. Bloomberg's no phone rule was always ridiculous. Bloomberg was full of himself, and may has well have passed a regulation prohibiting snow.

Of course, he didn't need to worry about snow, what with his private aircraft taking him to the Bahamas weekends. He didn't need to worry about schoolchildren or their parents communicating with one another in an emergency because he didn't worry about us either.

Personally, I'm glad the ban is gone. If only we could get rid of more stupid Bloomberg rules, we and our kids would all be better off. You'll pry my iPhone from my cold, dead hands, and I won't deprive my kids of something that's become indispensable to me.

Neanderthals Dominate School Policy in 5775

First of all, Happy New Year to all blog readers (and don't forget to write 5775 on your checks starting today).  Let's get right to the deplorable state of affairs in our schools. After 12 years of unending reforminess, we finally have a mayor who shows signs of not being insane. And yet, we still have the cell phone ban that has had us shaking our heads since its inception.

In my school we don't scan all who enter, and a lot of us are grateful for that. My feeling is the less schools resemble prisons, the better we'll do. Of course we haven't been able to stop the imposition of Common Core, or its untested and baseless mandates, but it's one nation under Gates after all. But I've got a teenager at home, and I know well that teenagers without cell phones in 5775 are not happy. I believe in the happiness of teenagers, so I don't go out of my way to enforce crazy rules.

If kids don't bother me with their phones, I don't bother them. I generally ask them to keep the phones out of sight. Sometimes kids use them as translators, and sometimes I look the other way when they do that. More often they keep them cleverly hidden under the desks and assume I won't notice. I'm sure that sometimes I don't, but when I do I make them put them away. I hate seeing kids texting in class, but I guess it's the equivalent of passing notes, something I did in school back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

It takes a lot for me to actually confiscate a phone. One time, a boy's phone rang, and he answered it in a foreign language. That was brazen. He not only used his phone in my classroom, but concurrently managed to violate my cardinal rule that we speak English in English class. That boy's Mommy had to come to school on Friday and pick up the phone. He had to navigate the world for several days without it, an unimaginable task for a modern teenager.

Another time a student determined it was a good idea to use his phone to play music in the trailer bathroom. I don't know exactly what inspired that thought, but the class and I sat incredulous as he did it. The boy deemed it hilarious until he found his phone would sit in the dean's office until Mommy rescued it on Friday.

I was covering someone's class once. I politely asked a boy to put away his iPod touch. Remember them? He complied, then took it out again. After the third time he defied me, I called a dean and had his device confiscated. When I went down to the dean to check on what happened, the boy's mom found me, and was apoplectic. She screamed that it was his "enjoyment," and demanded that her son never be in my class. Though her son would never be in an ESL class anyway, I silently agreed with her, as I didn't particularly want him in my class either.

The notion of benign neglect toward cell phones is a reasonable one. While don't ask don't tell didn't serve the military well, it's probably the best current approach toward phones. A more reasonable approach would be to have students simply keep their phones concealed and silent during class. That's my approach, with a few exceptions. The first day of class I usually ask kids for their phone numbers. It saves me the trouble of looking them up on the computer, and often gets me more current numbers than the computer carries. It also tells me a lot about the student who deliberately gives me a phony number, or her own phone number.

But one of the side effects of the ubiquitousness of cell phones is that many of us don't know our family phone numbers any more. If I don't let kids look up numbers on their phones, I'll probably never see them at all.

Kinetic Hallucinations

Am I getting old?  Am I losing my mind?  These are thoughts I entertain on a fairly regular basis and I don't know why.  I mean, if I'm not getting old I must be dead, and I haven't read my name in the obituaries.  On the other hand, I don't actually read the obituaries, so how would I know?  As for losing my mind, of course, if that were happening I'd probably be in no condition to judge anyway. 

Nonetheless, here's what's happening.  I have a little cell phone that I leave on vibrate.  But sometimes I feel the vibrations when they aren't there!  I reach for the phone but it's not moving at all.   This has been happening for months, and seems sufficient cause to question my sanity.  Still, I'm not seeing pink elephants.  I don't hear voices asking me to perform brutal acts of violence, though I seem to hear announcements in my classroom at the same time each day. 

But yesterday I was with a group of students outside the trailer, waiting for the bell, and I thought to bring it up.  After all, who knows more about cell phones than kids?  They all have iPhones and Sidekicks while I have some 30-dollar plastic piece of junk.  Now this seems unfair to me because I have a job and they don't.   Nonetheless, I mentioned the vibrations.

"I know, right?" asked one girl.

"That happens to me all the time," said another.

And a few more kids began to discuss this odd phenomenon.  Why does this happen?  Are we all crazy?  Is it something in the air?

They can't figure it out, and in some ways I can't either.  But I know one thing--these kids are far too young to be senile.  So I have to consider this day a small victory.

But who knows what tomorrow may bring?

Mayor Bloomberg Wants To Give Students Cell Phones

Remember Mayor Bloomberg's war against cell phones in the public schools?

Remember how Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein refused to listen to parents implore him to overturn the ban on students carrying cell phones in public schools?

Remember how he vetoed a city council bill that gave students permission to carry, though not use, cell phones in schools (just in case they need to talk to mom or dad in an emergency)?

Remember how the city council overrode his veto 46-2 back in September, but Mayor Bloomberg said "Nahh, nahh, I don't have to enforce your stupid bill!!!"?

Well, I remember, and I have to tell you that I was quite surprised today to read in the NY Times that Mayor Bloomberg plans to give cell phones away to students as rewards for good grades.

The giveaway will part of the mayor's "merit" program that pays students for achievement and doles out "school-wide bonuses" to teachers based on standardized test scores.

The mayor, not often given to noticing irony in his proposals and policies, sees no contradiction in his proposing to give students free cell phones if they get good grades but guaranteeing confiscation of them if they carry them into their schools.

Luckily other people get the irony:

Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, who sponsored a bill to try to loosen the cellphone ban by requiring schools to allow students to carry phones to and from school, said the proposal was “almost funny.”

“The fact that they even would think that this might be a powerful incentive for students is delicious,” Mr. Fidler said. “It’s a clear indication that people at a level below the mayor and the chancellor realize that this is a vital piece of technology.”

Yes, a cell phone IS a vital piece of technology these days, especially after 9/11 when we learned that it is important parents be able to contact their children wherever they may be.

I can understand why Bloomberg doesn't want students to use cell phones in schools, but I have to tell you, I have never had a problem with kids and their cell phones.

Whenever I see a kid using his cell phone in class, I simply ask the student to please put the cell phone away.

He or she has always complied with my request.

I know occasionally kids give teachers a hard time over cell phone use, but by and large most kids know they're not supposed to be using the phones in school and put them away when asked.

So come on Mr. Mayor, why not comply with the overwhelming wishes of parents, students and city council members and allow students to carry cell phones in school?

I mean, you can't offer a cell phone to a student as reward for achievement and then not actually let him or her carry it.

Where There's a Will...

Imagine kids paying bodega owners $1-2 a day for the service of storing their cell phones. Imagine them burying their phones in nearby flower beds and vacant lots. Imagine them taping their cell phones under subway benches before going to school.

Well, you don't have to imagine, because that's what's happening all over the city as a result of the cell phone ban. It's particularly curious since most kids say they use the phones to keep in touch with their parents. Doubtless many kids have other things in mind, but when my kid gets a phone, I'll pay the bill, I'll see the bill, and if I don't like what I see, there will be no more phone.

It's almost inconceivable that anyone who spent 9/11 in NYC fails to see the value of cell phones for kids, but it's gone completely over the heads of both Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein. What do they say?

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education, Dina Paul Parks, said she could not comment on what students do outside of school. Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. of Queens, an opponent of the ban, called the underground market for storage "unfortunate."

Although his opposition to the ban stems from safety concerns, Mr. Vallone said was adamant that city policy should "not involve negotiations between an 8-year-old and a bodega owner."

Mr. Vallone also said he was worried that the ban teaches students to ignore authority. "It's like prohibition," he said. "We're raising a generation of smugglers."

Smuggling brings to mind prohibition, which did not work out all that well. Furthermore, properly used and properly supervised cellphones pose far less danger than alcohol. I'm willing to monitor their use in my classroom, and the simple fact is I'll be doing so whether or not there's a ban. They are ubiquitous, far more so than the speakeasies of yore.

Mayor Bloomberg may as well ban snow. I've no doubt he'd make me drive to work in it regardless.

Mr. Bloomberg's Cell Woes

The City Council is poised to override the mayor's veto of a bill giving city kids the right to bring cell phones to school. This being the twenty-first century, many, many kids already do so, but if we pretend it's not happening, city hall reasons, perhaps they will simply stop doing so, thus moving us back into the eighties, when such problems did not exist.

The mayor can still opt not to enforce the bill on the basis that it violates state of federal law. However if he does so it may wind up in court again, and it would be fairly tough to prove that cell phone use violates existing statutes. I'd like to hear the arguments, though.

Those of us who were in classrooms six years ago today remember the hardships of kids and parents trying to get in touch with one another. We remember the lines of parents coming to take their kids from schools.

And we all know that the little security a cell phone provides is important. Hopefully, common sense will prevail, and kids will be able to bring their cells to school. Of course they should turn them off in classrooms, and of course they should keep them in their bags or pockets.

But it's ridiculous to say kids can't have cell phones in school. You might as well say it's not allowed to rain on school days.

It's All Good

In yet another PR coup for Tweed, an NYPD spokesperson announced that Mayor Bloomberg's scanning program was a great success. That's because the city managed to collect 18% fewer weapons this year than last.

From July 1, 2006, to June 10 of this year, cops netted 353 weapons - including guns and knives - from city schools. They also confiscated 1,340 "dangerous instruments," including penknives, imitation guns, laser pointers and pipes.

During the same period from 2005 to 2006, police collected 383 weapons and 1,678 dangerous items.

This means, of course, that 18% fewer students were dumb enough to carry their weapons through metal detectors, and have taken the precaution of slipping them through windows, or having their friends let them in through side doors.

The students, therefore, are smarter. This is clearly the result of reorganizations one and two. Surely they will become even more resourceful after reorganization three.

Had there been 18% more weapons, it would have indicated that the mayor's aggressive techniques were working even better than expected.

Meanwhile, 14,285 cellphones and 2,558 iPods were also confiscated through April, according to the Department of Education.

The city does not appear to have commented on whether that represents fewer cell phones and iPods. However, it's well known that it'll be tougher for kids to tell their parents what's going on in city schools without those nasty cell phones. In emergencies, they won't be making those inconvenient 911 calls and imperiling the merit pay of principals and APs.

After all, having kids learn about priorities is what education is all about, isn't it?

Work Smarter

Mayor Bloomberg, faced with the enormous failure that is his cell-phone ban, is considering the placement of lockers outside schools in which phones can be stored. The storage charge would be 25 cents.

That's a good idea for days when searches are conducted. Many of us have to turn away and go home on those days.

For example, above you can see the contents of my briefcase on a typical school day. I'm often uneasy about bringing it into the building on search days. Sometimes I have to arrange to pass it to my associates through windows, and they invariably charge more than a quarter. If I could just stash it in a locker, I'd save a whole lot of angst, time and money.

After school I'd simply retrieve it, move to a street-corner (or back into the building after search), and sell it.

Thank you Mayor Mike, for yet another innovation. While you won't give teachers a cost-of-living raise, at least we know you're one businessman helping out another.

Grabbing the Bull by the Tail, and Facing the Situation

NYC schools may be overcrowded, with the highest class sizes in the state. The buildings may be decrepit, crumbling, and infested with uninvited guests. They may be dangerous, with few consequences for assaulting staff members.

But thank goodness Mike "Accountablity" Bloomberg is hanging tough on his cell-phone ban. Despite the fact that no one whatsoever has any regard for it at all, it's good to know he cares.

About what I have no idea.

Still, Harvard University says, "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie."

Thanks to Schoolgal and reality-based educator

Oh, I Come from Alabama...

...but just forget about that banjo on your knee nonsense. Kids want cell phones in their pockets. And Alabama has leapfrogged ahead of New York City by instituting a more reasonable cell-phone policy.

In July, the district adopted a policy where its 4,500 students are allowed to carry a phone, but risk having it confiscated until the end of the day if they use it or it goes off during school. A second infraction requires a meeting with a parent.

I'd go with the parental meeting on the first infraction, but it appears to me an overwhelming majority of kids in city schools (or mine, at least) are carrying cell phones. It's counter-productive to make rules that will not be followed and can't be reasonably enforced.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg is in California, explaining why Los Angeles should follow the NYC model of oversized schools, meaningless mandates, and no meaningful mprovement in education. To show where his heart is, he's also attending two fund-raisers for Arnold Schwarzenegger. You may recall the governator referring to nurses and teachers as "special interests," while letting Enron slide on 9 billion they stole from the public.

Progress Marches On

For years I've been hearing people say, "Kids today don't know how to read because all they do is watch TV." I doubted that because I've been watching it ever since I could remember, and it never stopped me from reading.

Later, with the ubiquitous calculator rearing its ugly head, people started saying,"Kids today can't add or subtract because all they do is use calculators."

I always thought such people were being ridiculous. Kids have always been pains in the neck, and they hardly ever do what you want them to without a good fight. Read Tom Jones. They weren't any better then. It's their job to be pains in the neck, when you get right down to it.

However, despite my best arguments to the contrary, I'm coming around to the point of view of the Luddites. Wait a minute, I can explain.

My MO for getting new classes into shape is frequent phone calls. I have a particularly rough afternoon class, and I've been putting a lot of time into it. Anyone who's serious about calling homes knows kids whose homes you want to call are fond of providing incorrect numbers.

Kids will stand there, in front of God and everybody, and loudly declare they just moved yesterday, they only have a cell phone, and give you a multitude of even less plausible reasons they don't know their own phone numbers. Much of the time it's total crap.

But yesterday, I met a kid in the hall who'd cut my class three times in the last four days. I told him the phone number he'd given me was no good. He insisted it was, and showed me where it was written in his notebook (He really didn't remember it!). I'd called it twice, though, and told him it was disconnected.

With a knowing look, he pulled out his cell phone to demonstrate that, like all teachers, I was a total idiot. However, his cell phone revealed that he'd copied the number incorrectly.

Incidentally, if you're a teacher looking for more genuine numbers, the first place to check is the medical office, where something better usually turns up, even if it's an emergency number for an aunt or uncle. This year, I'm becoming very well-acquainted with the medical office personnel, and I'm fortunate they're so friendly and helpful.

Here's my point, though: Kids today don't even know their own phone numbers because all they do is use cell phones.