“So a roomful of half-present students seriously detracts from what we can accomplish on any given day.

I have been in a classroom where I have experienced this time and time again. Especially in college because teachers are not as down your throat like high school teachers were about phones. When half the class are on their phones and half the class are involved in discussion, it creates a pattern. The half that stay on their phones are going to continue to do so and get in the habit of letting the people who are engaged speak over and over again. This habit is having the same people give their input in the discussion every class, which is great for them, but if everyone was involved and adding their input the class would get more out of the discussion. That habit can be hard to break as a teacher and not knowing if you should lay down the law with phones or not, especially if the habit has gone on for a long time.

“The more powerful the goals we establish for ourselves, and the more we feel ownership over those goals, the more we are able to pursue them in the face of both internal and external distractions.”

I really liked this quote. If you do not have goals as a teacher then that creates problems. Teachers need goals just like their students have goals. If you are not creating a space where students will be actively learning, discussing, engaged, working together (which are hard to do sometimes) then they do not feel a need to pay attention and I think that is fair of them. If it seems like a teacher did not put in any work for the lesson that day or like they do not care, then it becomes really easy for the student to give that energy back.

“My student’s behavior in my class becomes linked with their desire to hold on to this symbolic totem, the cellphone.”

I definitely had felt this way in high school. A lot of my teachers had a phone wall where they made us put our phones in a numbered slot at the beginning of class and then get them when class is over. I felt like I was being treated like a child and like my teacher was treating me like a parent would. Nowadays, these cellphones are a student’s whole life as well as for everyone else. If that gets taken away then their “life” gets taken away and they become closed off and defensive in wanting it back. It is important to learn how to incorporate the use of a cell phone in the classroom sometimes and realizing that taking them away will get you nowhere.