Love this idea. I’ve been a high school teacher for the last nine years. It’s called using good judgment. During

lectures, cellphones serve no purpose. But so many students these days focus far better with headphones on (they are better able to tune out their socializing peers) during independent work. Phones can serve as calculators and as computers when schools lack those resources. Perhaps we should focus on teaching kids how to delay gratification. If you focus during notes, you can listen to music while you work. Give and take. And when these students go to college, they’ll need to learn how to self-manage.

Nicole Maller, Vanguard HS, Manhattan
(via Facebook)

I am both a teacher and a parent. My son travels quite a distance each day to arrive at the specialty school he attends and he is not eligible for bus service. Do you know how many days I have waited at the bus stop and become hysterical because he was late? Other times I was late to pick him up, and he sat waiting and worrying about where I was.

How nice it would have been for me to have been able to contact him to find out where he was and what was going on. Now I pay 50 cents a day so that he can leave his cellphone at a nearby deli. That’s an expense I can do without. I will be happy that he can contact me and I can contact him. Phones stay in book bags set to “off” but can be allowed in schools.

The students in my school are allowed to bring their cellphones into school, and I can’t remember when I last had to ask a child to put one away.

Lorraine Vozzo Cogliando,
PS 503, Brooklyn
(via Facebook)