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Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

portlandtribune.com

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Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#91

Post by rd »

nabbed wrote: post #62

I would love it if my laptop had a "study mode" for when I am trying to debug something or learn something new using my laptop. Some of us have less than stellar self-control, so a study mode which requires a multi-step rigamarole to shut off might prevent me from casually checking my email or a news website when I am supposed to be learning a new data structure or figuring out a data corruption bug. I have no idea h…

A combination of https://selfcontrolapp.com/ and Hammerspoon automation and you can lock yourself out of pretty much everything.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#92

Post by Aurornis »

temp84858696945 wrote: post #47
Rebelgecko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 2015 or so they became a lot more accepted. From talking to teachers, a surprisingly large amount of the distraction is parents texting kids while they're at school.

I wonder how much of that is actually parents texting kids, and how much of that is that kids are using that as an excuse to why they checked their phone mid class. That seems like one of the easiest excuses for kids to make that is hard to argue against.

It's some of both. Parents do text their kids during the day, but kids also pull out all the excuses when caught.

Even when I was in high school "I was responding to my mom" was the go-to excuse when caught using a cell phone. I had one teacher who would actually read what was on the screen (this was before locking your phone was common and probably lawsuit material today, but things were different) and call kids out when they were lying. The threat of having a teacher read your text messages was enough to put an end to cell phone usage in class.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#93

Post by recursivedoubts »

dgxyz wrote: post #30

UK here. My kid's school is insane. They think they are so progressive because they banned personal phones entirely, which is fair enough. But they forced us to buy marked up Yondr pouches, which is not fair. However this isn't the only problem. They also force us to pay monthly for iPads with wonky ass Logitech cases to be issued on which they do everything on Google classroom. Google Classroom is an abhorrently bad…

I teach CS in the US and I have gone back to pencil-on-paper quizzes for my classes. I allow one page of hand-written notes and given them a quiz review beforehand where I essentially tell them what's going to be on the quiz.

My intent isn't to trick anybody with hard questions, but rather to force the knowledge through their head out through their hand, then back through their eyes and through their hand again.

Next semester I'm doing in-person paper readings, where the first 20 minutes of the class are reading a paper I print out and hand to them, we discuss the paper in class, then they submit their annotated papers to me for a participation grade.

An irony of the AI era.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#94

Post by jedberg »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #90
jedberg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 10 years, driven a lot by school shootings, the tide shifted and parents started fighting schools about letting their kids keep their phone "so they can be contacted in emergencies". The schools gave up fighting with the parents. Laws like this give the school cover to confiscate the phones and say "talk to your congressperson if this bothers you, my hands are tied".

There is a difference between being allowed to have the phone (in your pocket) and taking it out in the classroom.

Yes, and parents were getting mad at the school when their kids couldn't reply to their midday texts.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#95

Post by alexfoo »

jon-wood wrote: post #78
dizzy9 wrote: post #43

> In crafting its policy, Estacada incorporated feedback from parents. That led to some key decisions around the cell phone ban. Rather than use pouches or lockers, students are allowed to keep their phones safely stored in their backpacks. That was for two reasons — it allows students to contact loved ones during emergencies, and many parents use phone trackers to keep tabs on their kids. I'm glad to hear this. They…

The sealed pouches are a bit of theatre. My son's school has a policy that pupil's can take their phones to school but if one is seen or heard on the school grounds it'll be confiscated and the owner's parents called to come pick it up on their behalf. From what I hear they're not shy about applying that policy either.

Offsetting part of the punishment to the parents (having to get them to come in to the school to collect the phone) is going to help get the policy reinforced from home in most cases.

My kid’s school had a similar policy. I didn't mind having to go out of my way to collect the phone and didn’t pass any of that on to my kid, they were annoyed enough about having it confiscated that it only took a few times before they modified their behaviour accordingly.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#96

Post by genthree »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #88
genthree wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, it's the parent. Parents calling their kids in class isn't as rare as you might think...

Yeah, there was a recent NYT article about the ongoing phone ban/pouch discussion and one parent reported having a shared Google Doc for emergency communication with their kid to work around the lack of a cell phone. The nature of such emergencies was not discussed, but I cynically suspect it was along the lines of "do you want mac n cheese or nuggets for dinner?" https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/style/yondr-pouch-…

Consider how many people are clingy and/or just have questionable judgement about boundaries with their friends, family, and acquaintances in general, usually with a healthy dose of neuroticism thrown in for good measure.

Consider that lots of these people have kids, and when they do, they tend to have a very friend-like relationship with them. Like, they aren't just magically better at this stuff when it's their kid.

These situations are a source of a great deal of this behavior, and the "I can't contact my kid-friend!" anxiety.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#97

Post by mattbaker »

It’s the right idea but it also puts the burden of enforcement on teachers that are already over extended, especially in schools where behavioral challenges are more prevalent. Great in a scenario where students are compliant, and a nightmare in environments where they’re not.

I don’t have a solution to that problem, but I also think it’s important to acknowledge it’s not all sunshine and roses.

I’m saying this as a person with close friends in Oregon school systems, based on the experiences they’ve shared with me.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#98

Post by lastofthemojito »

Aurornis wrote: post #83
lastofthemojito wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my teacher spouse's perspective, a lot of it seems to be the monetary value of smartphones. Some kids are coming to school with the latest and greatest $1000+ smartphone, so if the teacher drops it, scuffs it, misplaces it, etc, the parents are coming after the teacher about an item with real value. Teachers don't want any part of that battle so confiscation is now off the table.

But this new law also involves confiscation. I don't think that explains anything.

I'm not sure what law you're referring to. The linked article discusses the implementation of an executive order in Oregon that mostly bans use of cell phones during school time.

Some schools may do things differently, but it seems like the one highlighted in the article allows the kids to keep phone in their backpacks: "Rather than use pouches or lockers, students are allowed to keep their phones safely stored in their backpacks"

I didn't see anything in the article or the text of the EO about confiscation. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R5kfyMYsA6cg3VQKutUxLTIGVpI...

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#99

Post by overvale »

nabbed wrote: post #62

I would love it if my laptop had a "study mode" for when I am trying to debug something or learn something new using my laptop. Some of us have less than stellar self-control, so a study mode which requires a multi-step rigamarole to shut off might prevent me from casually checking my email or a news website when I am supposed to be learning a new data structure or figuring out a data corruption bug. I have no idea h…

I managed to build myself exactly this with Claude's help. There are 3 levels of protection.

1. I use an app called SelfControl, which blocks websites temporarily.

2. I have a script which watches `/etc/hosts` with launchd and reverts it to a version pulled from a server if the file changes. This blocks websites I never want to go to.

3. I setup a 'focus mode' with hammerspoon prevents me from launching certain apps, and makes me wait 30 seconds and type a string of text when I want to switch it off.

Yes, all of these things can be disabled when I want to, but the point is that they all add some fiction and give me a chance the reconsider the distracting action I was about to take.

I've been doing it for about 2 weeks, so far it's working pretty well!

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