A Problematic History
There is a connection between the way teachers conceptualize their role in managing student behavior and their perspective on the purpose and function of cellular phones in the classroom. From the first cell phone that crossed the threshold into the classroom, safely stowed in a pocket, teachers have been asking the question of what to do with these devices. Teachers are creative creatures by nature: this has produced some unique contraptions to help remove them from the idle hands (or hands wishing to be idle) of their students.
One of these contraptions was an outlet rental scheme. They were popularized in about 2014. There was be a power-strip or three plugged into outlets around the room where students could plug in, leaving their phones on the wall, and twenty-five cents in a jar. When this was done for charity, I thought it was a great idea, though a few of my colleagues charged students for outright profit. Teachers had discovered that giving students a charging station would help students keep their phones off their desks and out of reach. This gave students a “choice” about what to do with their phones – but the message was clear: they were unwanted.
In schools where cell phones have become illegal in classrooms, students are positioned as offenders and law breakers. Mupinga (2017) found that many schools are switching to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT). This is a system that lessens the technology gap but does not hold the school systems accountable for one-to-one devices. Even with these initiatives, high schools still have policies to deter their use in the classroom. While many schools had these listed on their websites, Mupinga (2017) surmised that the schools that were silent on their policies might be so out of fear of seeming unprogressive in an age where cell phones are normalized in society (p.71). In their study, a small sampling of 27 high schools, 66% had policies that no cell phones were to be seen during school hours and students must always keep them in their lockers. My own school district in Georgia, despite being BYOD, has policies restricting cell phones in individual classrooms.
My district is one of the largest public-school systems in the country and serves over one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand students across twenty clusters. Every school’s front door proudly displays the BYOD sticker, while most classrooms in my county use restrictive systems of management to keep them sometimes literally locked away under lock and key. In classrooms like these, cell phones are only thought of in terms of behavior management and policies on the syllabus. I have worked in two different high schools in our district over the last five years, but the rhetoric involving cell phones in the classroom has remained the same – “lock them up.”
Like most Americans, when teachers see a rule being broken, they institutionalize and incarcerate. According to Wendy and Sawyer (2018), the United States incarcerates six-hundred-and-ninety-eight Americans for every one-hundred-thousand citizens. This is the highest rate in the world. If twenty-three states were countries, they would have higher incarceration rates than any other country on the planet. America solves problems by putting them behind bars. This is no different for children. Fabelo et al. (2011) found that sixty percent of students between grades seven and twelve were suspended or expelled at least once with significant increases in repeating grades, dropout rates, and gang activity – all of which leads to higher rates of incarceration. Teachers, seeing cell phones as problems, do the same to cell devices creating phone jails. These are not always hinged boxes (I have seen some that actually have bars). Using Amazon.com to cheaply order closet organizers and bolt them to the brickwork, teachers can number these pockets for corresponding students to drop their devices into, and possibly retrieve them if the lesson requires technology. Cheong et al. (2012) found that “…[educators] ambivalent reactions to digital media management might be rooted in the same complex practices they enact to maintain their authority, leading to tensions in digital media use and evaluation” (pp. 1-20). Phone jails, as they are lovingly called, are lauded throughout faculty meetings and development sessions all over the country. The proponents of this incarcerate state would attempt to kill me with their eyes whenever I would bring up how much I love cell phones in the classroom.
At best, cell phones get used in my classroom daily, at least once. They are an integral part of creation, assessment, and the learning we do collaboratively. At worst, students work on the new skill of learning how to manage their technology themselves. We had a graduate, some years back, who went off to work for a major corporation out of college: a six-figure job. This young man was let go in the first month of employment for his blatant, laissez faire attitude with his cell phone during a board meeting. Unfortunately, self-management is essential, in all things, and cannot be taught without experimentation, failure, strategies, and coping mechanisms. Both Cheong et al. (2016) and Langford et al. (2016) make the case for educators to train students rather than banning technology. Students need the opportunity, especially with technology, and these experiential teachers for success in self-management. Despite this, some schools in the county like, Mateo High School, are moving towards systems like mechanized pouches to “lock up” student cell phone use for the entire day (Woo, 2019). Compliance has never been my goal or dream for learners in our classroom. Besides, students would find something else to distract themselves with instead of doing their work. Perhaps this is exactly why more work gets done, despite the phones, than in many classes I have observed with a no-phone-policy. Over time, we practice giving ourselves breaks throughout our class period to check our phones, change the songs on our playlists, and to check ourselves and decide that we should finish the current paragraph before picking up our devices. It is a process, but something I would rather they struggle with in our classes than deny the opportunity for growth. There are also the obvious benefits for how they enhance our lessons and allow for collaboration.
This chapter will discuss how cell phones can be used with formative assessment and feedback. Next, I will examine how things changed with cell phones as we shifted into pandemic and crisis instruction. I will discuss the challenges students had and ways that we used cell phones to navigate through the challenging times in the fourth quarter of the 2019 academic year where we (as a class) tackled podcasting, social justice, and graphic novels. Finally, I will examine specific tools that helped us to achieve the best end to the school year as possible. Cell phones can help create magic.