Age for cellphones? (should children have cell phones?) - Page 2

In the brief timespan that I was a teacher, I had a phone (that I could and did use to dial out) in my classroom, in addition to having an intercom from which I could call the office. My spouse had a phone in his classroom, too (different school, same district). Teachers are expected to call parents, and often have phones in their classrooms in order to accomplish this. Maybe Columbine and the school that valanhb taught at were exceptions, but that really surprises me.

Luckily, as the number of public phones goes down, the number of helpful bystanders with cell phones goes up. Also, as you describe the story, the fact that you stopped and drove the woman home appears to me to be much more important than the fact that you let her call her son before you drove her home.

did you teach in an urban district?
i teach in a small, rural district. about 2 years ago, we got our 1st fast food place - a Sonic.

I would only get my son one of those cell phones that can only call four people and 911. That way I don't need to worry if he needs to call me or if I need to call him. Once they are 16 maybe I would upgrade it.

im not a parent, but if i was i have a feeling a would be an overprotective mom, and i think as soon as the kid new how to use a cell phone i would get her a prepaid have my phone# in there and also explain to her if a strange man or women ever tries to take you, dial 911!

you never know these days....there are so many maniacs out there, and when he/she got into talking on the phone id feel much more safer with he/she having one in case of emergency.

Texting can help in an emergency too, and you can't do that with a regular phone. If there is someone with a gun or something in the school, texting will not attract any attention and can still get you help and alert friends who can alert police...
Even if there is a phone in every classroom, there is still the outside world where kids might be in an emergency type situation. Besides a lot of them might not have any quarters for a pay phone...kids will spend everything they have in most cases...unless they are responsible and taught different.

I've been teaching for nearly 30 years, and have never had a land line in a classroom. That applies to my current school in a major city. The building is four years old. The site of last week's school massacre is a few miles from my house, and there are no land lines in the middle school (where the pupils and three teachers were killed), nor in the adjacent high school. I will check again with my eldest niece, who was teaching at Virginia Tech at the time of that massacre, but I'm fairly certain that there were no land lines in the classrooms.

Even if land lines were in every classroom, there would be two problems. Firstly, the line into the school could be cut/disabled, and secondly, who is going to use the lines when bullets are flying? The first priority is to get the kids under cover.

Actually that was what I thought as well. I cannot imagine having a land line in a classroom where it would be accessible to abuse by some students if the classroom was unattended. Unless of course there was some way to prevent it from being used without a teacher present, which could then make it useless anyway if there was no teacher present during an emergency. Did I make that clear as mud?

Cell phones, land lines and physical self defense classes do not make people safe. Sure, all of these things have been used by some people in ways that may have made them survive some kind of an emergency, but they all have a tiny, tiny contribution towards being safe. If someone really wants to kill you, calling 911 or texting a friend will eventually tell the authorities about it, but it is extremely unlikely to help you survive. Fortunately, the cases where people are stopping at nothing to kill people (or otherwise damage them) are extremely rare. In order for your children to be safe, they need to learn how to keep from getting victimized by regular people: learning how to survive a Columbine style shooting is extremely unlikely to do them any good whatsoever. What keeps people safe in the real world is 1) situational awareness and 2) the ability to de-escalate situations (or, better yet, prevent them from escalating in the first place).

Very young children do not have situational awareness are are not good at de-escalating situations. So, in order to be safe, they need to a be with a responsible person who can do both of these things, and the child needs to be able to follow directions when necessary. If anyone (including a little child) needs help right now, what they need to do is yell for help. Good lungs and a willingness to make a scene are much better at getting timely help than a cell phone.

Older children should learn not to escalate situations, should retain the ability to yell for help when needed, should learn how to run fast (to get away), and should learn situational awareness to keep safe. A cell-phone has a minuscule effect on a teenager's safety, and may make them more brave, more willing to go unsafe places and do unsafe things, because, in the back of their mind, they know they can always call for help with the cell phone. Unfortunately, the help you call with a cell phone can take a long time to get to you and is therefore much better at cleaning up messes than preventing them in the first place.

Again, I think it makes sense to give kids cell phones in many cases, but I think that the mental association between cell phones and safety is quite dangerous.

To those of you who teach in classrooms without phone lines: how are you expected to talk to parents on the phone? Also, has anyone taught in a classroom in the last 20 years without at least the ability to page the main office? Doesn't everyone who teaches have an "in case of emergency" plan that includes a mechanism to summon help?

prior to around january of this year, any calls made to parents were either made from the office or on one's cell. we could page the office [still can] but couldn't call out from our classrooms.
our phones require a code to call outside of the school system, plus a 2nd code for long distance calls. a student would need to know this. of course, i teach 2nd & 3rd grade resource - it wouldn't occur to them [most of them, anyway] that they could make calls from my phone when i wasn't in the room [which is rarely, anyway]. i can see it'd be more of a problem w/older students.

I honestly see kids having cell phones no different than a child having a pet. It teaches them responsibilities! You cant just hand a 10 year old a puppy and expect them to know how to properly care for it, you have to show them and teach them. And with cell phones the PARENTS need to teach the kids how to manage their minutes, who to call, etc. You cannot just expect a 13 year old to understand that calling and talking to this person for this long will cost this much with out explaining how bills work to them. Maybe if more parents took a few minutes to tell their kids the fine print less kids would run up a huge bill. (And no not all huge bills are because of this, but many are!) My first bill was $300 because I didnt know what I was doing!
I do think that kids just get a firefly or something of the sorts at first and then get a prepaid and then something more.
Dont want them using the internet or texting, then call your cell company and block it from the phone number!
And yes you can see both incoming and outgoing calls on your cell bill, along with the times the calls were made and how long they lasted.
Its no different then letting your kids on the internet or watch tv, its about monitoring and teaching them what is right and wrong and what is safe and what is not!

I used my moms when I started high school because 95% of the time band practice or games ran over and I had to call and tell her I would be late. I also used it to call to let her know I made it to school okay or to a friends house okay when I started driving. She finally got tired of me having hers 6 days a week and helped me get my plan I have now. And if I went over on the price because of anything I had to pay the extra and I took over the payments when I got an actual job.

And also as for the cell phone etiquette, I work 2 jobs, one is retail one is with animals. I constantly have to deal with people on their phones at both jobs while I am trying to help them. But what I have noticed, most of those people are 35+, almost every younger adult that comes through my line or comes in at camp will put their phones down or say let me call you back. Most of the older adults will just keep talking.

I haven't read through all the replies but what's going to happen if you need to call the emergency services if you're in the bath room or the cafe or outside. You can't have land lines everywhere.