Teaching the Tech Generation – jaya harper, ‘23

With questions surrounding attempts at teaching tech-addicted teens, New Roads teachers share their concerns.

Imagine a world where every question can be answered in an instant, is this a blessing or a curse? The first thing most of us seem to do the minute our eyes open in the morning, is look at our phones.

Now imagine you’re a teacher in 2022, you want something as simple as getting around 12 students to take a few notes in the short 50 minutes you get for class time. However, when you look around you see each student distracted in their own way. Whether it be Youtube, Netflix, or one of the many social media platforms students all find themselves doom-scrolling through, not one student is paying attention.

“I love how if you have a question now right in the middle of a debate with someone that makes a comment that you don’t believe is accurate, instead of running to the library to get an encyclopedia you grab your phone out of your pocket, and you can say no that’s not the way it happened or that wasn’t the quote,” says New Roads Science Teacher and K-12 Director of Curriculum Tara Treiber when searching for ways to support the upside of a societal issue that threatens to erode future generations’ ability to connect human to human.

And it’s not their fault.

“When I first started teaching we had the overhead projector with the acetate sheets up, and VHS tapes,” Treiber said, discussing the drastic shift in the classroom since the uprise of technology.

Treiber’s comments open up a conversation regarding those who can’t remove themselves from screens, especially the important fact that it isn’t just students. “Anyone that has a phone has an addiction, teachers, students, everybody, it’s just a part of our life now,” Treiber said.

“One of the goals for me is to have kids take ownership of their education. That can’t happen if we don’t allow them to make good decisions. If they are engaged, they are not using their phone as a distraction,” says Society and Ethics/World Civilizations teacher Sean Brookes.

Brookes brings light to the importance of engagement in the classrooms. Are students more likely to be on phones the more strict and out-of-touch teachers become? Brookes has a different view than most on the rules surrounding how often a student should be on their phone. “Taking the phone takes away their ability to make good choices when it comes to education,” Brookes said.

In theory, what Brookes is saying makes sense. Students have the ability to use their phones for educational purposes throughout the school day in different ways such as fact-checking, locating sources, and working on creative projects if they don’t have access to other devices.

(Photo by Dylan Nilsson / The Jaguardian)

Teacher Sean Brookes believes that “kids have to make good decisions” when it comes to cell phone use in the classroom.

“I love how TikTok has afforded people an opportunity to tell their stories in some ways it may have increased empathy in the world because people are feeling comfort from others sharing their struggles…” Treiber adds while bringing up the important fact that phones and social media have also made us feel less alone in our complicated world. Treiber’s comment reminds us these platforms have also created societal change in how we view certain issues, because people have finally begun speaking openly about them. With phones being the chosen form of technology that most people use to communicate, they are now an important part of our work, school, and personal lives, including the life we live at school.

But that brings us back to the classroom, and whether or not these devices should be sitting in front of us demanding our attention as we try our best to learn. Brookes recognizes the paradox. “It’s not an easy fix, either way. Taking phones away can be just as detrimental to students’ learning as letting them have them. So what do we do?”