Bibliotectress

Well, I had been happy with YouTube music for years, but I’m frustrated by this at the moment:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/songs-blocked-youtube-legal-dispute-sesac-1236017120/

Ugh. We caught a kid doing that in my high school library last May. We radioed for help. The campus supervisor walked him outside, talked to him about it, and sent him back to us to finish the test he was working on. I couldn’t believe it. Later, we told admin about it and had to write witness statements. He was a freshman and said it’s what he does at home when he’s sitting around, and didn’t realize he was doing it. None of the students know, as far as I’m aware. We all kept it very quiet.

38H (UK sizing) here.

I still don’t go braless even in winter because they hang low, and that embarrasses me. Existing at all embarrasses me, so take that with a grain of salt.

Honestly, I’m at a loss. It’s so hard to get a single school of teachers to stick to one policy, let alone at a district or state level. When I send an all-staff email at my school (and they’re occasionally important with scheduling details), Outlook often tells me that only 67% of them even opened it.

I feel like you’d either have to: a) incorporate cellphones as a tool in class and have standard repercussions (e.g. 1st/2nd time earn a detention, 3rd time earn a Saturday school) for kids texting/on social media, or b) do something like a box on the desk so it’s visible but they can’t touch it.

I just don’t think it’s possible to ban them at school. Too many parents don’t respect any school authority figures after COVID with all the culture war stuff (fight to return to full day school, fight to not wear masks, fight to censor bipoc and lgbtq+ books/lessons/celebrations, etc.). I think either way, it’ll just end up being another shitty part of a teacher’s job.

I work in a high school in a California school district where they’re discussing banning cell phones.

Most teachers I’ve talked to about it think it’s really fucking stupid because you’re not going to be able to ban them, partly because a TON of parents showed up at the school board meeting to say they would send them with their kid anyway for a variety of reasons. The board also talked about different things they could buy to take phones and lock them up during class or as students come in. Most of the solutions were pretty expensive, and some of the schools are literally falling apart, so that also pissed people off.

A great start would be to have a campus-wide rule that is CONSISTENT. Some teachers give out a detention if they even see the phone. Some do activities with QR codes and use them as tools. Some have boxes on the corner of their desk and students are required to keep their phone in the box so the teacher can see if they reach for it. We have students with free periods, and if they don’t go home, they hang out outside around campus or in the library. Should phones be banned then too? Or just during class?

There are so many ways to try to deal with it, and at least in my school (not even the district as a whole), every teacher deals with it differently. I doubt the state of New York is all that different.

Anywhere not on the coast or high in mountains, yes. I’m in a large valley, and summers can be pretty rough. Not Phoenix rough, but still rough.

Wow that’s a huge hail ball! I get excited when they’re marble-sized.

Oh that’s good.

Thank you for taking the time to explain! I appreciate you!

;)

I’m confused, and you seem to be a lot more familiar with the term. I read the wiki link that explains tankies. I don’t personally know any left leaning people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes. Maybe because of my America-centric viewpoint and where things are today, but typically people who are economically left are also socially and politically left (equal opportunity is more important than individual freedoms), which is very anti-fascist. I’ve heard people say how great a true communism could be if it were possible, but no one’s ever made it past a dictatorship to get there.

Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right, and think someone has achieved a communist utopia without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?

I don’t know. I think it depends more on where they grow up and who/what they’re exposed to (in person and online). At the high school I work at, we have a bunch of lgbtq+ teens whose conservative parents have no idea they’re queer or go by a different name. But I also don’t live somewhere like Wyoming with a much higher conservative population. I live in a college town in a (barely) blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state.

I hope we find a way to kill the online radical right pipeline and continue to expose more teens to other ideas, other cultures, and other ways of life, and maybe it won’t matter so much who their parents are.