You were a teacher. What do you think of this?
On one hand you could just let her look at her phone. Maybe she can still listen and do good work. Maybe she'll fail, but that's her fault. Why not just leave her alone?
On the other hand, these are children. They do need to be guided and made to learn sometimes in spite of themselves. Letting her fail the class isn't being a responsible adult or educator. That's more of a good college age policy.
i taught in three high schools with very different policies on cell phone use
in one, a rural school, the students were taught from first grade on that the students were not to have their cell phones on school property - if they had to have them after classes, they were to arrange to bring them in and leave them in the front office
we had total buy in from parents and from students and no problems
in the second, the policy was no cell phone use in the classroom - the students could have them in the school, but not during classes. we had constant struggles with this policy and very little support from parents. this was the failing urban school.
in the third, the successful suburban school, the policy was the same as the second, but we had parental support and (mostly) student compliance. We
never had a student refuse direction to leave the classroom.
in my experience, when students have the cellphones out, they are distracting to the teacher and to the other students. it disrupts the classroom.
i remember having a discussion with a tenth grade business class once about expectations in the workplace, and how students - serious students - should view the classroom as their job, their workplace setting. you will
never get away with disobeying your boss's directives in the workplace. why expect to get away with it in school?
