Teaching Tool or Learning Noose

I only had to experience the headache of dealing with cell phone distractions once and in only one class before I dedicated teaching time outside of class to figure out how to use all of those attention-grabbing marks that you see in the Tally Chart of Cell Phone Notifications below for just one class period like this one was to help me teach instead of letting cell phone distractions keep me from teaching.

There are quite a few novel ideas I and other teachers have come up with to make cell phones a teaching tool rather than a learning noose. I will discuss some of the things that might be considered that could turn cell phone usage into a teaching tool rather than a noose-ending learning tool for every minute a student is in class later in this post or break such ideas out individually in subsequent postings on the subject.

Cell phones can be toxic to a learning environment. (Thank you to Mary Garza for her FB post)

A teacher in the U.S. had her students turn their phones on loud, and every time they received a notification they went up and put a tally mark under the correct category. This was one class, one period (call it a 90 minute class length). Every one of these tally marks is an interruption in a student’s education.

In year 2020-2021, nationally sized self-contained classes (generally thought of as elementary school classes) averaged about 19 students per class, the tally sheet below was from either a middle or high school class period, as it is labeled 4th period only for that day’s tally. The combined average national class size between a middle and high school class period was about 21.5, call it 22 students. (https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ntps/estable/table/ntps/ntps2021_sflt07_t1s)

I counted an estimated 254 hash marks, so 5x that would approximate 1,270 distractions from class attention for that one, 4th period Judging the participation from the tally, we might adjust the tally by as much as 50% for the tendency students may have to occasionally goad each other by notifying each other’s phones, we could cut 1270 in half down to about 635. For a 90 minute class, that would be 7-8 interruptions on the low side to 14-16 on the high side; call it a median of say 11-12 per student per minute. That could represent a median of about one per student interruption every 30 seconds of the entire period.

My last year to teach high school Algebra II mathematics was 2014, a year when the school district started collecting turned-off cell phones into a basket ever period for the students to reclaim at the end of the period. Even before that, since about 2005, students were instructed that they could hold on to their cell phones as long as they turned them off. (And observation of the effectiveness of that request was that only about 50% of the students complied.)

Obviously, the tally sheet above was in a class period in which students may have been instructed cold keep their cell phones and to at least silence their ring without requiring students to turn off their phone. There is a bit of historical culture change going on here of which teachers need to be aware. The whole nation has been traumatized by violence and social media bullying in and out of schools. Statistics of as much as 15% of students in 2020 experienced cyber-bullying during the 30 days prior to a survey conducted every year since 2002 (the trend is obviously up from 13% in 2002 and as much as 26.5% according to a 2023 survey: https://cyberbullying.org/facts). That’s just for cyber-bullying.

The statistics for youth violence point to a major reason for the increase in student cell phones, and the desire to keep them on and available should they feel threatened. Response time is a concern and obviously parents cannot always be reached or may not be in a position even to do remedy a physical threat. With the increase in all violence, but especially gun violence in schools and with the increased media coverage in each event, having cell phones in school becomes a very valuable need for personal security.

Federal data statistics (https://youth.gov/youth-topics/violence-prevention/federal-data) say that youth violence kills and injuries: Homicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 10-24. Each day, approximately 12 young people are victims of homicide and almost 1,400 are treated in emergency departments for nonfatal assault-related injuries. Moreover, youth violence is costly. Youth homicides and nonfatal physical assault-related injuries result in an estimated $18.2 billion annually in combined medical and lost productivity costs alone. If a jury was evaluating the triple damages for a loss of life, it is very easy to estimate between $30 million to $50 million as the potential monetary damages of the loss of one person over the course of their life and the potentially deprived lives of their descendants which can be estimated. Obviously, that amount could vary wildly depending on the education levels, employment capacities, number of resultant children and time.

Check out the following graphical trends to get a sense of past and future expectations: (https://www.theknowlesgroup.org/blog/average-american-lifetime-earnings/)