“Here it is a daily battle. Kids are addicted to their phones. In middle school and high school it's a real addiction—not just they're bored and on their phone, they are addicted.”
“We have, at least at the high school and in the middle school, no phones in class. We don't want to see it—you leave it in your backpack and we don't see it, fine. Otherwise, we have these wall charts over here by the door where you can put your phone in a packet if you can't ignore the impulse to take it out of your backpack. They do get written up. I mean, you can give them a ‘I shouldn't see it, put it in your backpack’, but it's no second chances. If I see it, I can write you up (….) Again, administration is on our side. Rather than me just being frustrated that all these kids are addicted to their phone—and they're not listening and they're not participating and they have no idea what I've taught them for a week, and then I give them a quiz—our administration had said, blame it on them. ‘It's not my rule, that's our school rule. Don't be mad at me—I didn't make the rule—that's what the principal said. So if you want to take it up with him, you can take it up with him, but don't be mad at me.’ And so I think being unified on that front helps, too, that the kids don't give me attitude for it. Do they roll their eyes? Yeah. But they are respectful of the fact that it is a rule and they know that they're not following it. So I think consistency is important for that. “
“People have blamed Covid for a lot of things. I think that's true—they were home for multiple years with nothing to do but use their phone. I think phones and Covid sort of collided. But it's not a new issue since 2020. It was happening before 2020 (…) but I think it sort of exploded at that point.”
“Also, the fact that they don't know how to talk to each other (…) It's come to the point where (…) if at the high school you're done and you have that awkward two minutes left, they can't have their phone. You tell them to talk to each other. We were given prompts, like ‘Turn to your neighbor and say, What movie do you like, or How was the soccer game last night?’ And at first it's super awkward and no one talks (…) But they’re starting to build conversation. They don't know how to talk to each other. They could text you, but they don't know how to talk to you, and I think building in those times, as silly as it seems—telling them to talk to each other, making lab groups where they have to talk to each other—I hope long-term we'll solve some of that.”