This time it's those pesky electronic devices that are under the gun.
Board member Charlie Hoff said he's worried about students downloading inappropriate pictures, fighting over iPods and using them to cheat. "I think they shouldn't be there, period. They're just a plain distraction and every other week they become much more sophisticated."Seriously, if you can't handle this like any other distraction--we've been there with CD players, Walkmans (Walkmen?), transistor radios, carrier pigeons--then you've got problems beyond gizmos.
But board member Evelyn Castellar said the district should teach students how to use iPods. "It would be a terrible thing to ban electronic technology," she said. "This is a learning tool — just like a calculator. They used to ban calculators and now you're required to bring them."
AMEN! My school banned them in the classroom this year, which greatly annoyed me. I like listening to music when I work; I had policies and procedures in place to regulate when students could and could not use them in my classroom and rarely had problems. But because a handful of teachers couldn't figure out how to manage them in their classrooms -- you know, they were reluctant to take a hard line and be the "bad guy" -- we all got told we could no longer allow them in class.
ReplyDeleteI said the same thing at the time that you're saying now: If you can't get through to your kids when it's appropriate to do certain things and when it's not, you've got bigger classroom management problems than iPods.
I say it's "Walkmen."
ReplyDelete