What would you prefer the school do?
How could they motivate you to actually pay attention in class instead of playing with your phone? Honestly ask yourself if this "addressing motivation" would make geometry more interesting than tiktok.
I can try to make the material interesting and be engaging but if you're watching Overwatch on your phone all of that is a moot point.
Show
but if you're watching Overwatch
You can just take away their phone in that case, no?
Not sure about OP, but my point is that phones can be useful. But if they're clearly not...having to look at what the kid is doing and judge things on a case by case basis would eat into lesson time which is already stretched thin with class management as it is
School will never be as interesting as a phone. Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer. Your textbooks will never be as entertaining as your feed. What families and teenagers have to understand is that education is a choice. If you want to learn, you’ll probably have to put your phone down for long periods of time to actively listen and learn. It’s difficult. It tires you out. It’ll frustrate you. But you will eventually learn.
Then again - when I look at home prices and inflation, I understand young people’s feelings of futility.
Good luck young people. I’m really rooting for you to figure this out.
As a former young person that came from poverty and is finally buying a house in a high cost of living area, go read "so good they can't ignore you" it might help with the figuring out!
Tiktok cannot do it better. Tiktok is an app designed to hold attention. If you are more engaged by cat videos than geometry tiktok will not try and show you geometry
that would just be a new app and why would tiktok cooperate with that. There isn't as much money in that area and even if there was an educational app kids would go on tiktok instead of it
Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer.
Those influencers are entertaining?
I don't think it's just a feeling of futility - it's true phones can be distracting and offer more potential entertainment, and it's true learning can sometimes be a slog. At the same time, learning can be fun and engaging, and phones can offer access to a wealth of information (of highly varying quality, admittedly).
Concentrating too hard on mere academic success as gauged by metrics like school grades is undoubtedly discouraging for a student who only goes to school if they are told they must.
I don't think it's particularly unreasonable to conclude that any decent approach to the first will also include the second. That shit is literally designed to be addictive, even the best teachers are gonna struggle to compete.
I agree that the school environment should be more motivating, but there's no way to compete with apps and games designed to be addictive, even adults have trouble avoiding their phones at work.
The amount of times I told my students they can use their phone for certain exercises, then 90% of them just went on Tiktok or played Clash Of Clans, is why is started not allowing phones.
I get that to the 10% it was super helpful but it's just easier to not allow everyone.
Well, at least you gave them a chance. Thank you.
I'm all for giving them a chance to prove they're able to be responsible. Especially the kids that always try hard and deserve to be trusted.
I found that a lot of kids struggled to accept any consequences of their actions, though taking their phones off them for playing games was pretty clear to them.
100%, if the schools were funded well enough, issuing school phones would be amazing!
School computers work well because they block most of the distractions but ofc students have 1001 distractions in their own!
How do you address low motivation levels though? The response to covid, the endless school shootings, their parent's jobs, and even a small amount of reading about climate apocalypse should make it obvious to children that society despises them and that they have no future. How do you motivate someone to do well in school under those conditions if they're not already motivated?
education is a benefit in and of itself. Maths helps develop your brain to solve problems, english makes you more able to appreciate culture which in turn will make you more interesting and better able to socialise, history helps you understand how the world is and that it used to and can be different.
These things are worth learning even if you don't do them for work
Something I’ve found to have worked well in the past is phone breaks. It helps regulate phone usage and makes students far more likely to pay attention, myself included. The teachers that had the most success gave us phone breaks. Regulation and breaks > punishments.
That's actually a pretty elegant solution. A teacher being against something that motivates the kids is a losing battle to begin with. Extending that olive branch stops that bridge from being burned, and there's been all those studies that show prudent use of breaks increase productivity, including outside of that environment
Something like 15 minutes break between 45 minutes of each lecture/period would be probably the most logical solution (which many countries implement) so there is at least some chill time instead of just having to hurry class to class. What if you need to 9/11 the school toilet, grab the heavy-arse books from the locker, make death threats to NAFOs on Twitter, or get some xp in Runescape? Maybe kids will be less likely to goof off in class?
Not only kids struggle with this, adults too. I've seen restaurant visits where everyone puts their phone on a pile on the table, first one to ring pays the bill. Otherwise Billy couldn't stop texting his controlling partner all night.
There is more research to be done, but so far this might be a good thing: https://www.verywellmind.com/how-do-smartphones-affect-the-brain-2794892
first one to ring pays the bill
Always eating for free 😁
Always eating for free 🥲Everybody knows how to mute their phone or turn it off, and the other end can get used to them being busy and unavailable sometimes.
I was rather referring to having nobody who would text/call me, besides my carrier, of course. But also that means I won't end up in restaurant with someone.
Second slide makes the first one possible but will still take effort beyond that
I don't think so tbh. If students are motivated enough, then this policy wouldn't need to be pursued.
A lot of kids are really addicted to their phones it's hard to even talk to them when they just always have their phone in their hand
American society has always been HIGHLY punitive with an almost non existent interest in actually solving a problem. Even the most "liberal" of us if you mention plugging the social/economic holes that lead to massive crime spikes get all
"Mayyybbeeee I guuueeeesssssss but like what you can't just NOT throw the book at them and ruin their life forever?!?! How else will they stop doing crime if we don't effectively take away their ability to earn a valid living via criminal charges?!?!"
Phones certainly decrease our level of motivation by decreasing our dopamine baseline. Huberman Labs episodes addressing dopamine are really interesting
i do have some sympathy for teachers taking phones away because I had one class in school where a kid would play that noise outside the frequency adults can hear really loudly the whole time on his phone.
Also memes and texting friends are always going to win out over algebra and english class if they are an option right there
