The Common Denominator Online: Matt Wennersten

	<script language="JavaScript" src ="http://ads.bfast.com/ad/script?bfmid=2181&siteid=30154617&size=468x60&space=8019921"> </script> <noscript> <A HREF="http://ads.bfast.com/ad/click?bfmid=2181&siteid=30154617&size=468x60&space=8019921" TARGET="_top"> <IMG SRC="http://ads.bfast.com/ad/serve?bfmid=2181&siteid=30154617&size=468x60&space=8019921" BORDER="0" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="60"></A> </noscript>
Front Page - Archives - Search

Class Notes
	Student cell phones create problems (Published October 17, 2005) By MATT WENNERSTEN

Imagine you’re a teacher, in the middle of a lesson and a cell phone goes off in class. What do you do?

This shouldn’t be a hard question. You confiscate the cell phone or, if the student refuses to hand it over given a few opportunities to sort it out in a civilized way, you send the kid to the principal, who then confiscates it.

Students aren’t allowed to have cell phones in school. Students are supposed to walk through a metal detector and also have their bags scanned before they enter school. Any cell phones found are to be confiscated by the administration.

This year, the system is breaking down, and the reality of cell phones is colliding with the need for uninterrupted instruction.

When cell phones are an infrequent nuisance, they’re easy to deal with. Every student knows that the cell phone user is wrong, and the culture of the classroom supports the teacher in dealing with the ringing cell phone. When every kid has a cell phone, and those cell phones are visible on belts, backpacks or in jacket pockets, it’s hard to convince a kid that having the cell phone in school is wrong.

This doesn’t change the policy, which is quite clear: cell phones are not allowed in school. There are good reasons for banning cell phones (and pagers). The purpose is not to make it difficult for parents to contact their kids, but instead to make it difficult for drug dealers, gang members and just plain mischievous kids to create trouble. For example, three years ago, a prank bomb threat was called in at Eastern Senior High and the call was traced to the pay phone in the cafeteria. You can’t trace a cell phone to a kid quite so easily; that bomb might be real.

This year, there has been an explosion -- an explosion of cell phones in school. There are three main reasons why cell phones are omnipresent.

The new D.C. Public Schools Security Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) requires that "DCPS staff handle items prohibited by school policy (cell phones, etc.)," which essentially means that you have to have an assistant principal or principal available to confiscate cell phones, because, unlike last year’s security company, the new security staff will not confiscate them. If an assistant principal isn’t at the front door every minute, the kids bring them in.

The second reason for the massive growth of cell phones is cunning marketing. Cell phone companies have created all sorts of ways to get kids into cell phones; now there are prepaids and rechargeable minutes, as well as rollover plans and the traditional contracts.

The third reason is that parents, especially working parents with irregular schedules, seem to want their kids to have phones. They use them to stay in touch with one another after school, or to contact each other in case of emergency.

A rough survey of my two classes shows that 30 percent of the kids have cell phones. Increasingly, they’re using them at all kinds of wrong times. What makes it hard is that the kids who have them are generally well intentioned, not just suspected drug dealers or crew members. Most of the cell phone users are kids calling their moms and dads, sorting out rides for getting home after school, calling brothers to see if they left their book at home, checking on a dentist appointment.

At lunchtime, before school and especially after school, it’s as if the bell signals the start of a phone frenzy. At 3:15, when classes end, cell phones emerge from every pocket and kids are connecting.

Last week, I was standing at a sink in the boys’ restroom and heard a ringer going off in the stall five feet away. As a teacher, I have a responsibility to enforce the rules. As a human, I’m not going to enforce a rule that’s unenforceable. There’s no way I’m going into a closed stall in the boys’ restroom. Frankly, I’m also not going to try to take away a kid’s cell phone when they’re sitting at the bottom of the stairs during lunch. I’ve confiscated maybe three cell phones in the last two years. It’s no big deal – I just hand them in to the assistant principal and he takes care of it with the student later. But the kids don’t know this. Their parents have entrusted them with the cell phone, or they’ve spent a lot of their own money, and they have no guarantee they’re going to get the phone back. It can quickly spiral into a heated situation.

It’s been my experience, through several of these negative encounters, that kids are determined to keep their cell phones, and often have been instructed by their parents not to let anyone else have them. Unfortunately, when the phone got to school, it was too late to talk it over with the parents. It’s also too easy during lunch or in the hallway for the kids to escalate the situation into a angry confrontation or just run away; I’m not willing to fight a battle I’m likely to lose. So I ask them to put the phone away, telling them that if it’s out, and I see it, I have to take it away. In other words, if they can pretend they don’t have one, we can all get by.

Getting by hurts me in my guts. In my classroom, I’ve had to make a choice. Cell phones have gone off in class maybe 10 times in the last three years. I’ve learned that if a phone rings and I pretend that I need a drink of water and return 30 seconds later, the phone has magically stopped ringing and class continues peacefully. If it rings and I ask the student to hand it over, even with the most well-behaved students, I have a five- or 10-minute power struggle and discussion, followed by a jacked-up class that never really settles down.

I’d rather that cell phones never made it into my classroom. I remind students that cell phones should be left at home or if they must be brought with them, they must be off -- not just on "vibrate." And at the end of the day, I move on with my teaching and I live in hope that a cell phone doesn’t ring in my class, and that I don’t see kids with cell phones walking down the hall, or talking on the phone at lunch. But I know that I will.

If you have a rule, you should stick to it. If you can’t stick to it, it’s a bad rule that needs to be changed. This is case where I think we have a bad rule. It is a BIG problem when cell phones come into school. Really, the cell phone rule is designed to keep our kids safe. For example, if there’s a "beef" during second period, you don’t want kids calling their homeys to jump somebody on the corner after school.

Here’s what we need to do: Modify the security contract so that security guards can stop the phones from coming into school. Educate our kids’ parents about the rule so that they know kids shouldn’t be bringing them, and if this doesn’t work, give kids a place to store their phones during school hours so they don’t disrupt the day. Once the flood of phones has slowed, demand that teachers pitch in and confiscate the few that make it through.

Parents, I look forward to your support by asking your kids to leave those phones at home.

***

Wennersten teaches mathematics at Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights and a graduate of the D.C. Teaching Fellows program (http://www.dcteachingfellows.org). Please send stories, comments or questions to mwenners@yahoo.com.