I understand your point...but really. Is it too much to ask that parents reinforce the school’s policy on cell phone usage? I teach high school...most students are good about keeping the phones out of sight, but some are truly addicted! Remember...cell phones can take pictures of tests, students can text answers etc if there is no policy in place. And should teachers have no recourse if students rudely answer phones or text in class???
If a student is consistently rude with cell phones, I ask him/her to put it on my desk in plain sight. They can pick it up at the end of class; I do not confiscate it. However, the assistant principal can—if the student is constantly being written up—ask for the phone and require parents to pick it up at the end of the day.
The idea that students have a legal right to have a phone is ridiculous.
I believe that there are other options available to teachers other than the confiscation of private property. Such as:
- giving a zero grade for the test
- kicking the student out of class and send them to the office for disruptive behaviour. This should happen regardless of the cause. Bet it iPods or gameboys or toys or any other distraction.
Continued disrutptive behaviour should be met with letters to the parents, dententions, being sent home and expulsions. Note that not a single one of those actions have the school seizing private property and certainly not searching that property.
Allowing or requiring the teacher to take possession of a disruptive thing teaches the kids the wrong message. Instead of teaching them that they are responsible for their actions regardless of the temptation, it teaches them that as long as the teacher lets them get away with it, it is ok.
It also teaches them that private property is not really private property - just like when they are asked to buy school supplies and told to hand over their personal property to the state.
As for the right to have a phone ... what right has been placed in the Constitution to allow any agent of the state to seize private property?