Cell Phone in School

The issue of cell phones in schools in back in the news. Even before it was an issue, it was an issue. Many if not most teachers didn’t have cell phones in the early 2000s, but some students did. In those days, students using their phones at the schools I worked at was strictly prohibited.

I was working at a middle school as a substitute vice-principal. Like most admin subs, I was charged with routine student discipline and supervision duties. It had been a slow day with zero physical territorial or opinion disputes in the lunchroom or other places. It’s indeed a rare day to have no classroom disruption referrals in a school of nearly 600 students. I was typing my report to the VP for whom I had substituted after making my last walk through the halls before going outside for bus duty.

There was shouting from the school counselor area, and I rushed there. The regular VP was already there and asked me to take the shouting girl to my workspace so he could find out what was happening without the seventh-grade girl’s continuous interruption.

The shouting was about her not wanting to give up her cellphone when using it in class. She had claimed to the counselor that she’d passed it to a friend when escorted by the security officer from her classroom, but she wouldn’t name the classmate. Men, of course didn’t do girl searches, and she’d vehemently refused to allow the woman counselor to do so.

Her cellphone rang while she was sitting in my office. She told me she had to answer it because it was her grandmother calling. What she didn’t know was that the school secretary had her grandmother on the school line with a request that she come to the school and pick up the girl.

I didn’t know at the time that the grandmother told the regular vice principal she could not drive and the girl would have to take the bus home.

There’s more to the story than I care to tell, but she broke loose several times and flailed her arms when the VP and I were attempting to escort her to the bus. For those who wonder why two men could not physically restrain a non-compliant seventh-grade girl, you should try it sometime.
Well probably not!

In the aftermath, the school secretary said something like, “Boy, she sure laid one on you.”

I felt a blow during the scuffling but thought it was just from the girl’s random flailing. The swelling and pain were clear when I looked in a mirror and touched the spot. The closed-circuit hallway video the secretary had watched and recorded in real time showed her taking an aimed punch at my face followed by another that missed.

Legal action started, and there was a ‘rest of the story’ but not for this forum.

Remember when unpermitted calculators in the classroom were the issue? I could say more, but … (Perhaps I will say something about the real issues¹I saw the same issues in Christian schools as I did in public schools. as I saw them in a later post.)