The New Normal Is Cell Phones in the Classroom: A Twenty-Year Retrospective

Introduction

When I entered my first classroom in 2000, the technology consisted of a VCR/TV combo, access to an overhead projector from the library and the only computer in the class was my teacher's desktop. We had a book room with class sets of canonical texts and books on tape--which was considered an advancement. Cell phone use in the student body was sporadic. As a teacher I had a cell phone primarily as an emergency use tool. My cell phone had a QWERTY keypad, limited Internet, and a screen less than half the size of the cell phone itself. These early cell phones were nothing like the powerful, capable and connected devices that students now use some with 5 inch screens. When 911 occurred, my students were called from class, via the intercom, by the front office when their parents came to the school to check them out.

We were kept informed about the days’ events through the intercom and from teachers who escaped to the lounge to watch CNN. They returned with news which was whispered in front of partially closed doors while students waited for updates. No one pulled out a cell phone to watch the news in real time. Cell phones were contraband and, if used during class, I was to take them and send them to the office and a parent would have to pick the phone up after school. On that day, we were locked down with our first period class the entire day, and in this class, two students had cell phones on them and were unable to connect to the Internet to provide more information about the events of the day. Today, I keep my cell phone face down on my desk, set to vibrate and check and use it frequently, sometimes during class. In 2000, it was in my purse, in a locked closet. The wide-spread use of cell phones has changed in lock step with their usefulness and connectedness to all the parts of modern life. My sophomores sat quietly talking among themselves and occasionally asked questions that could not be answered: Are we going to war? Why would they attack America? Are the attacks over? I responded to student fears and angst and released them when they were summoned. We were back the next day.

Contrast this rather teacher-led, top-down moment, where most of the information came from the front office and other professionals in the building, to the day COVID-19 arrived in my school district with a teacher who had tested positive. When COVID-19 shut down schools, I found out from students who read the news on their cell phones as the school board tweeted and sent emails out in response to the pandemic. Almost every student held and watched a cell phone, yelling information as they retrieved it about what we all assumed would be an unscheduled three-day weekend. At the end of the day a meeting was held in the auditorium, confirming what we already knew, and asking us to vacate the building by four o’clock. This was Friday March 13, 2020 and we never returned. I left papers in the bins, sticky note collages on the white board, and agenda topics scribbled in dry-erase.

Teachers in the United States are grappling with the ways in which technology has changed the classroom. Students record each other and teachers on their cell phones. The struggle over the use and control of student access to their cell phones is one that creates division that did not exist 20 years ago. Then, technological incursion in the classroom was unheard of and teacher’s like me wanted more useful technology in the classroom. The day every student would have a device like a tablet or laptop and not just a clunky computer lab, was the dream of every teacher I knew.

Cell phones grew in popularity but were not the primary source of classroom distraction, although naturally, distractions existed. Students were distracted by one another. I often caught students writing notes or writing rap lyrics, passing them back and forth during class. During my time at the high school, I never confiscated a cell phone the way I did candy, gum, or the occasional small knife--also contraband. There were arguments and fights, destruction of property, car accidents, deaths and suicides just like in today’s schools. In my first years as a teacher, the students were more interested in one another, and much more likely to participate and engage. The classroom was teacher-centered with students as passive, if not captive, participants. The outside world was held at bay once the door shut. Today’s classroom is composed of students whose relationships, self-value and community exists largely outside of the classroom--even the school building-- and is held together by their cell phones.