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.

Today started off just as every other Monday at school. I was still sleepy and so were the students during my first period class. But like the good teacher that I am, I still found that energy that I knew the students need to see from me. Then, suddenly, my teacher energy met the devilish energy of a student in what became a bigger confrontation than I had planned for so early in the day (I think most of you teachers can attest to the fact that students in first period on Monday morning are generally pretty mellow).

As I was walking around the room, trying my best to be engaging, I spotted a young lady who was engaged in some cell phone usage. Now, she thought by keeping her cell-phone-holding hand in her purse during the text-message conversation that I would not notice the illegal behavior. But we teachers do see (and hear) everything. Feeling generous, I politely told her to put the phone away and start paying attention. This was generous, because I usually would immediately confiscate the phone — as is our school policy. But rather than accept my generosity, the young lady felt obligated to let me know that I was “trippin’” and that she did not have a phone. I asked her what, then, was she text-messaging on in her purse. She said that I must have seen a feminine hygiene product and that by my calling attention to it, I had thoroughly embarrassed her and caused her much grief. I now had no choice, in response to her direct lie and disrespect, to do my duty and confiscate the feminine hygiene product that looked like and lit up like a phone. However, she was well beyond the point of civility and cooperation, and I knew that there was no way that I was going to get that phone. My only choice was to take her to the office and let the higher-ups deal with her (our higher-ups are very supportive of us lowly teachers and I knew that they would handle the situation quickly and severely).

As luck would have it, one of the assistant principles just happened to walk into my room for some completely unrelated reason at the precise moment that the young offender was storming out in anger and “embarrassment.” I couldn’t have planned it better. After a brief conversation with the asst. principle, I was able to go right on with the lesson as if nothing had happened. The girl’s parents, however, had quite a disruption in their day. They had to come down to school for a conference with the principle. In addition to their daughter’s after-school detentions, the parents also grounded her from the cell phone indefinitely.

And to think, all of her grief could have been avoided if she had just said “yes, sir” and put her phone away when I had asked (or “axed”, as they say). *sigh* When will they learn?