If you were to ask educators what some of the most frustrating, most infuriating, most maddening issues in education today were you would get an array of answers. Some of the responses would probably be topics such as the over-reliance on testing, administrators that are either incompetent or micro-mangers or both, the extraordinary amount of unnecessary meetings, or how education as a whole has commitment issues because what we teach and how it is taught never lasts long enough to see whether it works or not. But if you asked educators (particularly secondary educators) what was the Number One biggest problem in education the response would probably be overwhelmingly cell phones.
Fighting cell phones has become not a daily fight, but a fight that educators wage constantly. Initially, when cell phones were first able to text as well as make calls, the problem was irksome but wasn't bad. It was essentially the same as writing notes in class just electronically. This was something education has had to deal with since the dawn of classrooms. However, the entire world changed around 2007 when the first smart phones hit the market, now it was possible to access the internet from your phone, on top of this new frontier social media was just getting started. At this point the dam broke and whole new version of student distraction came flooding into the classroom. Teachers were ill-equipped to deal with this and the education system as a whole was oblivious to the issue because this also happened to around the time that it was believed testing was the solution to our educational issues. Since you couldn't test on cell phone use, it was a problem that did not exist. Now be sure, teachers were pleading for some sort of guidance or policy around cell phone use but the response from the education lords was usually something like: "We don't have time for that, because CSAP/TCAP/Dibbles/BEAR/IOWA/SAT/PSAT/ACT/PACT (insert your own testing acronym in here) will be here in 6 months and we've got to be ready!" So teachers languished in their classrooms fighting to get students ready to take some silly test while students were far more interested in disappearing behind their screens to see how many "Likes" their recent post had received. For students it was far more important to them how many bars their phone had than how the Bill of Rights was important to their lives. And so teachers trudged on teaching their content while students had their hands below the desk and their eyes looking at their laps while thinking they were cleverly fooling their teachers into believing they did not have their phones out. It was exhausting and infuriating for educators. Then I decided if the educrats or other educational leaders weren't going to do something or recognize the problem, then I would. I figured out a way to solve the issue, and that almost got me arrested. Now that you know the problem, here's the story.
It was 2013 and cell phone use had only gotten worse. It wasn't an isolated case of one or two in class, it was an issue with 1/3, 2/3, 4/5's of the class. I had heard about these devices known as "cell phone blockers" and I immediately was intrigued. These devices emitted a signal that jammed cell reception meaning that the phone would not be able to make or receive calls, send or receive texts nor could it connect to the internet. This was an amazing invention! I looked on Amazon and VIOLA! You could buy them from Amazon! I chose one of the devices listed and excitedly read the description: It blocked all cell reception and data. Great! It was perfect for dinner time or bedtime in households with teenagers. It was great for schools and movie theatres. Perfect! I had to get one, this was the holy grail that I and virtually every other teacher had been looking for. I couldn't order it fast enough, after I had ordered it I got the disappointing news that it wouldn't arrive for six to eight weeks because it had to be shipped from China. Total bummer, but totally worth the wait. Visions of late 1990's and early 2000s classrooms danced in my head. Six to eight weeks couldn't go fast enough.
Finally the day arrived. My package had been delivered. It was a black square box, about two inches by two inches and maybe one inch in depth. It had two black antennas that screwed into the top of the box and were about an inch and a half tall. The box plugged into an outlet and there was a switch on the bottom of the box to turn the blocker on and off. The next morning when I got to school I moved a bookcase I had over an outlet, plugged in my device and turned it on. Sure enough all of the bars on my phone disappeared, I couldn't make a call, send a text, and most importantly I could not access the internet. I moved my bookcase back in place and waited for school to begin. Shortly after first period began I noticed my students were perplexed, many of their brows were furrowed with frustration and angst as their phones could not connect to anything. Some of the more brazen students even raised their phones in the air and swung them wildly about trying desperately to get something, anything on their phones. Nothing worked. Alas, their only outlet was to learn about the New Deal. The first few days were baffling to the students, but soon they seemed to resign themselves that their phones just were not going to get reception and the phones all but disappeared. As the phones vanished the amount of work and effort increased. I soon found out that the device not only worked in my room, but apparently had also knocked out the entire third floor of the school. The third floor of the school now cell phone free. I let the other teachers on the floor into my secret and they were pleased. Education once again ruled supreme and liking posts had been laid low. It was glorious...for two weeks.
It was during lunch on a Friday, I distinctly remember it was a Friday during lunch. My social studies department members and I were gathered as usual in the social studies office eating lunch together. As was par for the course during our lunches we were discussing current events, laughing at events from the morning in our classes, and making jokes at each others expense. It was an otherwise unremarkable normal afternoon. Then came the announcement over the intercom. "Teachers, please check your emails immediately for an urgent message." We opened up the email on the computer in our office to find an email from our principal labeled in all capital letters URGENT! The email said that an there were a few satellite trucks in our parking lot from AT&T and they had found a cell phone blocker being used inside the school. They asked the principal to get it taken down within the next 30 minutes or they would would be able to pinpoint exactly where the blocker was and whoever was employing the blocker would be arrested for violating FAA laws because the blocker was denying access to data and satellite services that a customer had paid for. The email ended with the plead to do this or one of you will be taken out in handcuffs this afternoon. Well, that seemed overly dramatic and a bit heavy handed, but since it has always been a goal of mine to not go to jail, I really didn't want to find out if this were true or not so I went an unplugged the blocker. As lunch ended and the students filed into my classroom they were abuzz about the satellite trucks in our parking lot and the hubbub that surrounded them. They also quickly discovered that their phones had bars and they could access the internet and thing quickly returned to they way they had been...sadly.
The fallout was almost as comical as the story itself. I got called down to the principal's office that afternoon. This principal and I had an increasingly frosty relationship and this was just another layer. My principal told me that she knew it was my teaching neighbor- with whom she also had a very strained relationship with- that had the cell phone blocker. When I told her that I was the one with blocker, she assured me that she knew I was only covering up for my neighbor. When I insisted again that I had the blocker, my principal again did not believe me and told me to not take the fall for someone else. Then my administrator went on to tell me that AT&T had a search warrant to enter the school to find the blocker and they were ready to arrest and press charges against the culprit. However, my principal pleaded with them to allow her to try and get it taken down without incident because she didn't want to see my teaching neighbor or anyone else taken out in handcuffs. To this, I raised my eyebrows. I cannot imagine AT&T having a search warrant to find a blocker- that seems a bit ridiculous and I promise you, at this point in our relationship if either myself or my teaching neighbor were going to be possibly removed I cannot imagine our principal standing in the way of that. Furthermore, according to my principal, the blocker not only knocked out the entire third floor, it was much more serious that that. To hear the way our principal tell it, the blocker knocked out an entire area of the city! Cell phone reception was down for up to a mile away, the police radio in our school police officer's office was destroyed because it fried it's ability to get reception, it would not have surprised me if I had been told that the entire area had become a communications dead zone and planes were dropping out of the sky when they flew over. To hear my administrator tell it, this small $60 black box from China had caused a small Electromagnetic Pulse over a square mile of Arvada, Colorado. Who knew?
So, there is my story about how I, for a short time, solved one of the most frustrating problems in the classroom while at the same time apparently almost got sent to San Quentin in solitary lock-up for life. After that my teaching neighbor's and I relationship with our administrator went from being very strained to an all out war ending with myself and my teaching neighbor being moved out of our school and being placed in different schools with orders that we could never again be on the same staff- but that is a totally different story that maybe I'll tell someday because it too is a good story. Students went back to being on their phones and the problem has only exacerbated in the years since. The battle has gone from being irritating in 2013 to exhausting and disheartening in 2023. It's hard to compete with 45 second cat and dance videos or constant selfies with filters in order to get those desperately needed "Likes". Teaching now is not near as enjoyable as it once was, but I couldn't imagine anything doing anything else. And for a brief two week moment in 2013, the third floor of Arvada High School won the war.
