2 Phone Calls
11th September 2006
Call 1, made at 4:22 pm while driving home from school.
Mr. B: Hello Mr. Schwartz. This is Mr. B, your daughter Jessica’s Statistics teacher. I’m calling because I’ve been having trouble with the amount of talking that Jessica has been doing in my class. Despite several one-on-one converstations with her about the importance of paying attention and not distracting others, she continues to create a disruption. If this continues, I will simply ask her to leave the class and spend the remainder of it in the principal’s office. If you are able to help the situation any from your end, I would greatly appreciate it.
Mr. Schwartz: Rest assured Mr. B, I will deal with this tonight. You will not have any other problems like this from Jessica.
Mr. B.: (Thinks to himself: Yeah, I’ve heard that before.) Thank you very much.
Call 2, made at 4:26 pm while stuck in traffic on the way home from school.
Mr. B.: Hello Ms. Clark. This is Mr. B, your daughter Markesha’s advisory teacher. I’m calling to let you know that I took Markesha’s cell phone from her today. She thought that she would try to be sneaky by hiding in the corner of my classroom and sending text-messages to her friends. She must have forgotten what I always tell my students: “You are not more sneaky than me. I know what you did, what you are doing, and what you will do.” If you would like to get the phone back for her, you may personally come by and pick it up in the main office at school.
Ms. Clark: Well, Markesha knows that she’s not supposed to use her phone in school. But I’ll speak to her about it again.
Mr. B.: Thank you. Please stress to her the fact that her phone needs to be turned off and put away in her locker while she is at school.
We’ll see if these calls actually make difference in behavior. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.