I want to be louder about “other stuff”
Last spring while my kids were in school, a group of friends and parents gathered around while the election office verified all the signatures on my petition to run for District 6. No, that’s not the typical way to file for office, but that show of support stands out in my mind as a watershed moment. Since that day, I’ve been asked why I was running countless times. After all, I’ve been a proud supporter of USD259, proud to send my kids to public schools, proud to be a leader in our elementary school PTO, proud to serve on the district’s strategic planning committee for technology. But honestly, I wouldn’t have considered reconfiguring the next 4 years of my life if I thought everything was going fine with our schools.
One of my favorite quotes, hanging on my son’s wall for years, is from Brian Andreas: “There has never been a time I haven’t been proud of you, I said to my son, though some days I’m louder about other stuff so it might be easy to miss that.”
So yes, I am “WPS Proud”, AND I also see it’s time to get louder about other stuff.
I want to be louder about addressing the problem of cell-phone distraction in our schools that impedes learning and social development. School cell-phone policies are shown to make kids safer, reduce anxiety at school, improve academic outcomes especially for students struggling the most, and reduce the burden for teachers implementing the policies. The district revised its cell phone policies 2 years ago. Despite these revisions, our district (and Kansas) is woefully behind when it comes to implementation and enforcement. We need a voice on the board willing to be loud to make sure we are giving our kids the best chance at a distraction-free school day.
I want to be louder about all the costs, monetary and attentional and safety, of educational technology (edtech) in our schools. Technology has its role in education, offering some transformative opportunities for sure, but we need to use tools best suited to each task. Even Bill Gates recently questioned the effects overuse of technology is having on adolescents and questions whether he’d be who he is today had he been exposed to the same technological distractions. Saturating the school day with screen time, for instance, has been studied for decades, and the results are in. Students retain information better when reading from printed materials. Students perform better when taking hand-written notes. And yes, writing by hand will still be relevant and useful in a modern world especially for students considering a college path. The district has made some strides, like the Information Service and Technology department’s app dashboard showing which edtech apps are approved for classroom use. We also recently went away from the 1-student-1-device model for elementary students, favoring targeted use of computer carts for classrooms as needed. But we can’t stop to congratulate ourselves. The district needs a voice willing to be loud about the costs of over-reliance on edtech.
Don’t dismiss my push for change as naïve, or worse, cynical. We work hardest to improve the things we care about the most, and I’ve spent years championing distraction-free education and appropriate use of technology in our classrooms. Our school board needs someone who is proud of our schools and also willing to be loud about this topic. But it doesn’t stop there: I want to be louder about other “stuff”, too.