Let’s get to it. If you’re still reading at this point, you’re most likely related to me, a masochist, or just hungry for the schadenfreude when it all falls apart. Part 1 here, Part 2 here. Animated spoilers for this part:
So, I Met With the Superintendent
Okay, I have to admit it. Even though we’re not a giant school district—we are the fourth largest in the state—the Superintendent has way better things to do besides meet with a teacher who was vague in his initial email of July 28th, resulting in the meeting on September 6th. I figure she had some time to do those other, better things during that month.
But still, she was up for meeting with me, and, according to her assistant, anxious to hear about my ideas. So — this was me leading up to the meeting:
I had a quick one-on-one with my principal before heading to the meeting to ensure I got the points across that 1) it was impossible for us to pay for these pouches at the school level and 2) he wasn’t interested in going it alone. Got it. And I was off.
I went in with talking points and slides, which, in the end, I probably didn’t need. I didn’t think I would ever find someone who dislikes the distractions that phones provide in the classroom more than I do.
She saw the possibilities and potential but was concerned about parent buy-in and the money. Both were things I had plans and suggestions for. In all honesty, I probably ended up overselling the idea. Her response to the Yondr pouches was very positive, and she was cool with my school launching a pilot program and perhaps expanding.
We discussed the possibility of adding a middle school and blue-skyed what a student who had been using a pouch continuously since sixth grade would be like by the time they reached their senior year.
Money was the thing, and I joked about approaching our local telegenic celebrity law firm (you know who I mean — you have one in your town, too) to sponsor the bags, with the name of one partner on one side and the other on the other. In my imagination, I even compared them to Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol as the fathers of a phone-free generation of kids instead of Christmas. A tremendous legacy was theirs for the taking.
I said how, if we started this at my school, to please not visit until about a month in because we were going to have “cold turkey shock” with some behavioral issues most closely related to addiction. I also said that if we started as a pilot school, every middle and high school principal would want to visit and discuss adding them to their school.
The lights were all green, and we were good to move forward.
We ended things with her planning to talk to people on her side and for us to talk again soon. I volunteered all my resources and time to talk to whoever needed to hear this. More than that, she said we could move forward ASAP if we could find the money. It was a good meeting. I was jazzed.
Visiting the Galapagos…
Following the meeting, I sent a thank-you email (I was raised right) and kept working and researching. Over the next few weeks, the Superintendent and I exchanged a couple more emails, and I reiterated my willingness to come and talk at any meeting she needed me to be at.
Nothing on that front happened, and given the lack of requests for information or follow-up, I had a growing suspicion the idea wasn’t mentioned to her cabinet or brought to school board members. I can’t put my finger on why, but the vacuum that followed that meeting made me feel like the whole thing was running out of steam.
Before I continue, I need a little full disclosure—nothing from here should be read or felt as a diss on the Superintendent. She was acting in good faith and was eager to move forward with this idea if only to see how it would work.
Just like soldiers on the field complaining about how out of touch the officers in their command posts are, classroom teachers will say snarky things about central office staff, and I admit I’ve indulged on more than one occasion. But I’m ready to give the benefit of the doubt here.
The one-month wait between asking for a meeting and getting one, the rare return email to my updates (roughly weekly), and the lack of anything resembling a commitment…I get it. Central office works at a glacial pace on its fastest days. Their day-to-day concerns are not the same as those experienced by classroom teachers, and I wouldn’t want them to be.
And I can only imagine a Superintendent's schedule—a million things vying for attention (some Very Serious), a million people wanting to talk (some Very Important)—doing triage must be insane. I remember one return email from the Superintendent arriving Sunday night after 10:00 p.m. So yeah, I get it. Different worlds, different priorities.
Things started (or so I thought) moving along again when I had something concrete from Yondr — my guy had sent me a sample pouch and a new quote for two schools, ours and our main feeder middle school. I sent the information to the Superintendent, and she emailed back to set up a meeting with a deputy superintendent, the head of school security, and the head of student services to bring them up to speed and keep the ball rolling. She cc’d all of them on the email. That was late September.
After weeks of no response from any party, a date for a meeting with the others was quickly set, and the meeting finally happened on October 27th. They came to my school, and we met in my room. Yay—home-field advantage.
I’m not going through the meeting blow-by-blow because I’m still recovering from it, and my therapist would appreciate it if I didn't go all fine-grained on it, given the progress we’ve made in sessions since. The short version is that they were the coolers to my winning streak.
I had to explain the idea at least three times and answer questions repeatedly—with the sample pouch and base unit on the table. There was a sense of disbelief about what I said about phones in the school and classrooms. It was as if their beliefs about my reality superseded my actual experience.
There was talk about Board members who they knew would say no immediately as soon as the idea was brought up. There was talk of calling the Education Partnerships Lead at Yondr to talk them down on the price because, after all, what did I know about negotiating prices with vendors (a little, since this vendor was the only game in town and they were watching demand for their product rise steadily)?
By the third misunderstanding of what I was pitching, I thought I was being trolled. I was getting a little spicy after a while. When asked (again) about money for the pouches, I suggested I could take four metal detectors from our school (until then largely unused—and a subject for another time) to a pawn shop and see what they’d offer.
In retrospect, that was probably a mistake.
What got me was the third (fourth?) misunderstanding of: "They put their phones in the pouches upon arrival, and unlock the pouches at the end of the day, as they leave…” The question arose of whether students could use their phones at lunch. Again, I thought I was being trolled. The serious faces told me I was not.
I said no. That was the whole point—by not having phones, the kids would talk to and interact with one another rather than isolate themselves in their bubbles. Being without their phones in a social gathering like lunch would allow them to develop their sorely lacking social skills like we used to do back in the day rather than continue to stunt them. There’s research to back this up.
Allowing students to have their phones during lunch undid the good of not having them during the rest of the day. The comment was made that not being allowed to use their phones during lunch sounded like we were turning the school into “jail.”
My mind after that one:
All public spaces in our school are covered by cameras (and trust me, if we could get cameras in bathrooms without being sued into an alternate universe, we would because of vaping…and other bad things that go on in there). We also have a sheriff’s deputy in the building during school hours— an individual in tactical gear walking the halls and armed with devices specifically designed to end human lives, restrain individuals, or force compliance via bodily harm.
Our kids sign out to use the restroom via SmartPass, which keeps a record of how many times they use the restroom, for how long, how many students are out at a time (it’s a limited number), and who else is out (if a student and their pals are deemed problematic, they’re not allowed out at the same time).
And remember, asking someone if you can go pee is kinda…dehumanizing.
But that’s a topic for another day.
Our school has a Standard Mode of Dress (SMOD), a kissing cousin to uniforms. We don’t have a school nurse daily, and student mental health resources are stretched to the breaking point. We have metal detectors, bag searches, and contraband seizures. Aesthetically, our photos of our school could be put in a “prison or high school?” contest, and I guarantee a 50/50 split—at best—on guesses.
Orwell jokes are so old and threadbare that we no longer make them at my school (we make Brazil comparisons because we’re edgy like that).
But a phone in a pouch during lunch would tip things over the edge and make it feel like a prison.
Did I mention that two of the three checked their phones constantly throughout the meeting?
You saw that coming, didn’t you?
While walking my guests out, we discussed Smart Pass and its pros and cons. I mentioned that I had, long ago, thought that wristbands, using the same RFID technology Walt Disney World used with its Magic Bands, would be a passive answer to attendance, restroom trips, student location during emergencies, etc. (okay - I know there are massive privacy issues involved in Magic Banding students, but I was desperately trying to come up with small talk).
Following that, one of my guests said they liked that idea from an equity point of view because everyone has a wrist. Since not all students had phones, the individual wondered aloud if the Yondr pouch idea was a solution that aligned with the district’s core principle of equity.
I was unfamiliar with that definition or expression of equity, so I just let it go.
Of course, I emailed everyone a thank-you note for coming and hearing me out and offered my time and resources (and the phone number of the Yondr contact so he could be “talked down” on price)—if they needed me to talk to Board members, I’d be there. I never heard back from anyone, but you knew that.
I Mean…
Later, on reflection, I think the trouble we had finding common ground was that they were trying to make phone pouches work within their worldview and view of the district’s operating system. Of course, it wasn’t going to fit. Taking a school phone-free requires a different way of looking at the problem and replacing an old system with something new.
Public school districts are status quo factories, despite any claims otherwise. The cogs within the machine rarely yearn to innovate, break free, and go their own way. If they are, they’re soon-to-be former cogs in the machine. The vast majority of people who work in the management of a school district aren’t changemakers—they’re the people left who can tolerate the conditions under which they have to do their job or, as many put it, “wait it out until retirement.”
Teachers are the agents of change. Innovators. The makers of the good trouble.
The education industry wouldn’t need consultants if change and new ideas could be generated internally.
District systems become ossified, as do the thinking and thinkers that develop the systems. At best, a suggestion to do something new or different is politely shut down. At worst, the suggestion of change is seen as an attack on the system, causing its defenders to sound the alarm and rally.
And the organization's distributed responsibility/leadership structure does no good when you’re trying to get the organization to change how it works.
A primer on distributed responsibility from Timat’s Wrath by James S.A. Corey (part of The Expanse series of novels): this line was said to explain why no one in a military organization ever faces accountability.
Distributed responsibility is the problem. One person gives the order, another carries it out. One can say they didn't pull the trigger, the other that they were just doing what they were told, and everyone lets themselves off the hook.
And on and on and on.
It’s not that extreme in my organization—no one’s pulling triggers, but without a clear vision, a clear plan, there’s a lot of CYA, and no one is stepping up and putting this on their desk, Harry Truman-style:
And no one is directly responsible for the lack of action on the idea of a phone-free school.
I’m not casting blame or lobbing oblique personal attacks here. I’m reporting my findings as a Charles Darwin-esque observer with 15 years in the field. This meeting was face-to-face with the finches I’d only seen from afar until then. These finches respond to the environment created around them, one to which they’ve adapted.
Okay, another full disclosure. I’m staying as vague as possible while still (I hope) conveying the feel and frustration of the journey. I’m writing this because I don’t want people to make the same mistakes I made when trying to get their schools or districts to go phone-free. There will be pushback from all angles, even (especially) from those who swear they do what’s best for the kids, 24/7. Expect that from the start.
As
, who writes Phone School, expressed about his battle with trying to curb phones in his (former) school:I now live in daily fear of being hurt by people who think they’re doing the right thing.
If there’s one thing I learned through my experience at my old school it’s just that - I cannot implicitly trust anyone working in public education.
I think about that a lot.
At the same time (again, at-will employment state), I’ve got this knot in my stomach that publishing this will get me in trouble, either because of what it says, what some interpret it to say, or because someone’s feelings got hurt while reading it.
I’ve been in trouble on behalf of students before and have danced with the scary committee in central office that judges as a monolith on faculty conduct, ethics, and morals, and I’d rather not do either again.
Apropos of that, I’d like to reiterate that I really, really like and appreciate the Superintendent and believe she was operating with the best interests of the students at heart. But in the end, I’m only about 60-40 there won’t be any trouble for me because of this.
And I’ll probably be lying awake tonight, starting at the ceiling, thinking that split is more like 80-20.
By 3:00 am, I’m sure it will be 90-10.
Next time: I promise you, I’ll end it.
See you soon.