When Harwood Union middle and high school students return to the classroom at the end of the month, they will be asked to seal their cellphones and smart watches into pouches that are locked and unlocked via battery wands.
While logistics aren’t completely understood yet, students will enter the school and pass through a station that locks their pouches. Those pouches will stay locked until the end of the day when students will pass through these stations again.
It’s reasonable to question how this might work – given how cumbersome it turned out to be to do temperature and wellness checks on each student every day during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also reasonable to question whether simple technology exists to allow students to unlock their pouches on their own during the day.
It's reasonable to ask if having someone in the central office fielding and managing calls and messages from parents to students will be burdensome.
It's also reasonable to ask about if/how students will access things like calculators and cameras that they’ve been accessing via their phones for legitimate classwork.
It is clear that cellphones and smart devices are extremely disruptive in a learning environment and the desire of educators and administrators to stop this cycle is understandable. We get it. Cellphones are disruptive everywhere and why do so many people put their phones on speakerphone and walk around in public sharing their conversations with all of us?
But look around – kids aren’t the only ones using their cellphones inappropriately. Don’t we all need a lesson in cellphone etiquette? Aren’t all of us guilty of checking our phones during meetings? Or responding to texts while in a conversation with someone else?
Given the potential logistical issues (plus the cost) of these cellphone pouches, it seems reasonable to ask if there is some way the grownups could lead by example with our current cultural smartphone addiction.
We get the argument that we have to restore a connected, respectful and engaged learning environment and maybe breaking the dysfunctional chain for these young people will do the trick. SBut it’s really something we need to address as a society and community.
