I want to create a culture of respect within my classroom— where students feel that they have a responsibility not only to themselves but also to one another. Due to the respect I hope to elicit in my students for one another, which will be modeled through my respect for each individual student, technology will not be permitted during group discussions, lectures, or presentations. Though this does sound as though these three aspects will take up a majority of the class structure, it is during these that social interaction and visual participation is essential to learning. During group discussions students need to be using active listening to pay attention to one another’s ideas, comments, and questions.  Only through active listening can we engage in productive and collaborative discussion. If students are on their laptops, they are likely not maintaining eye contact, they may become easily distracted, and the speaker feels a distance between themselves and their classmates due to the screen. Technology will not be permitted during lectures for a similar reason. Logistically, when I am lecturing I cannot monitor screens and ensure students are staying on task. In addition to this, taking notes by hand increases retention and reduces distraction, a fact supported by recent cognitive science studies. Lastly, I want students to be actively listening to the material being presented by looking up, staying on task, and limiting distractions. The other time technology will not be permitted is when students are presenting. Students should be actively listening to the student that has the floor, just as they are during group discussions.

Though technology cannot be used during discussion, lectures, and presentations, it will be encouraged during activities and independent work time. Technology will be often used when I am having students work in class on their writing—whether that be writing a small prompt answer or an essay. I believe typing can remove barriers for many students, such as those with dysgraphia or ADHD, whose thoughts move faster than their pen. I don’t believe students need to be handwriting as this can take too long and actually limit their creativity.

They will also be encouraged to use technology for non-traditional formative assessments such as video creation, generative AI collaboration, graphic design, gamification, playlist creation, etc. For example, a student might choose to create a podcast reflection, a digital comic strip, or a Canva presentation instead of writing a traditional paragraph response. This not only increases engagement, but supports students with different learning preferences, language backgrounds, and cognitive strengths. I want to give my students a lot of free choice and many avenues to explore their own creativity. Technology is an extremely helpful tool for expressing ourselves in a plethora of ways—and I want students to have access to that. I believe technology can amplify students’ already strong voices, as ISTE standards also state—  “Technology should be used to elevate student voice, not replace it” (International Society for Technology in Education, n.d.). My priority is making sure I facilitate healthy conversations early in the year around technology. I want my students to know that I too am a technology user and that I am a supporter of them using it. However, technology is not always good and it needs to be used in the right context. We will have a conversation about the ways technology is radical for learning and the ways it can be detrimental.

I want to create a physical board or poster that students can see hanging in the classroom with the collaborative rules we have made. These rules will not be created by taking exactly what the students want and throwing them onto the “rules” poster. Instead, the boundaries will be created by a group consensus, guided by my own questioning and their own honest reflection. This process will amplify student voice, build classroom ownership, and foster a culture of mutual respect. I believe having this conversation so early with my students will build a sense of trust and clarity between us all, since we will know the boundaries and freedoms of technology in the classroom.

*No Generative AI was used in the crafting creation or editing of this paper

References

International Society for Technology in Education. (n.d.). ISTE Standards. https://iste.org/standards

My ideal policy for phone use is quite stark from my ideals on general technology and generative AI use. My goal is for students to completely forget about their phones while they are in my classroom. I do not want them to be distracted by the dopamine hits of notifications and by the temptation to pick up their phone. As Jonathon Haidt states in Anxious Generation: “The smartphone is not just a phone. It is a portal into an entirely different social world—a world that demands attention, distracts from reality, and replaces face-to-face interaction with digital performance” (Haidt, 2024, p. 113). Though technology such as computers can offer many benefits to learning, phones may pose too much of a distraction. Since I am aware that students will likely be on their phones during passing periods and after school, I want to maximize social interaction and in-person engagement during the class. I will monitor and manage cell-phone use by requiring students to put their phones in a cubby at the beginning of class when they enter. This will be established after having an open conversation with students about why I am deciding to implement this boundary in the classroom. I want to tell students that I do respect their personal property and empathize with how it would feel to leave your phone in a designated space that is not their own. However, to build a community together and have meaningful conversation to the highest caliber we can, I want us to all put away the lives that are happening on our phones. I will let them know that I will also be putting my phone away in a drawer during class as I believe we are all members of building a culture and community within the class. We will then sign a class agreement as I believe students tend to respect rules more when they help create them. After having this discussion I will implement a cubby underneath the signed agreement we all made for them to slip their phones into at the beginning of class. Each pocket of the “cubby” should be filled with phones. There are two essential things I believe about consequences: 1) they should affect everyone (even if in small ways) around you as no actions you make will only affect yourself. This promotes and enforces the idea that students do not only have a responsibility to themselves but also to one another— and that their actions affect each other and 2) that positivity and validation encourages students more than punishment. Because of these beliefs, I will implement a Screen time Streak. For every day no one fails to put their phone in the cubby the streak will go up. Once the students get to 30 days the students will get their lowest quiz grade dropped from the grade book. If they fail to put their phone away and go on it during class, the streak goes back to zero and the student who broke the “contract” or “agreement” will have their phone taken to administration for the rest of the day (if that is in line with the school policy). 

*No Generative AI was used in the crafting creation or editing of this paper

References

Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press.

As a large user and advocate for generative AI, I will be sure to use it both for myself as an educator and within my class for my students. I believe generative AI can be a great tool for students to become literate in and accustomed to in order to navigate their own unique personalities and curiosities. Generative AI is extremely adaptable and can be curated differently to each person. Because of this, AI (specifically ChatGPT) is very familiar with who I am as an educator and how I view my lessons and students. I will turn to ChatGPT often for advice and help in generating ideas as these will likely be curated to my style as a teacher. I want students to feel the same way when they go to AI. I want them to know its limitations and deficiencies through conversations I will facilitate through Socratic seminars at the beginning of the year— but I also want them to know how to navigate Generative AI in such a way that they can become partners with it instead of dependents. I will help build this healthy relationship with AI through students creating declarative and opinionated statements about themselves, their personalities, and their writing before going to AI. Then, I will have students ask AI questions about themselves or their work and reflect on whether or not they agree with what Generative AI says. I believe this is a healthy exercise to instill in students the idea that they should already come to AI with their own ideas and opinions and check those against and with AI instead of using AI to form their opinions. This is what will make strong individuals— those who can think critically and analyze for themselves. Students are lucky that they now have access to a tool that can accelerate, elaborate on, and promote the ideas that students already have. The OSPI guidance states, “In K–12 education, uses of AI should always start with human inquiry and always end with human reflection, human insight, and human empowerment” (OSPI, 2024, p. 2)

I also am aware that oftentimes generative AI can actually feel like a person. This means that when AI compliments or validates students, they likely will truly feel validated and complimented. I want to use Magic School to create rooms where students can submit their drafts and interact with a monitored Gen AI to gain confidence in their writing and reflect on critiques. However, I will also make sure to leave a plethora of meaningful feedback on solely student- written papers in order to show students that they are competent and unique without AI. When approaching creative writing, I will facilitate a discussion around whether or not students believe AI can create meaningful art. What does it mean to make art and is it only art if humans (or something with a consciousness is making it?). I will then have students write a poem and input a prompt into ChatGPT to also generate a poem of the same topic. We will share our poems and debate what we think about the differences between the human-written poems and the AI-written poems in order to decipher whether or not we will be using AI during creative writing segments. 

*No Generative AI was used in the crafting creation or editing of this paper

References

Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. (2024, March 27). Human‑Centered AI guidance for K–12 public schools (Version 2.0). OSPI. https://ospi.k12.wa.us/ai

In order to anticipate challenges and see how my views and ideals line up with the district of which I will be student teaching for, I have taken the liberty to research the phone policy of East Valley High School in East Spokane Valley. According to eastvalleyhs.net, “Per District Policy, students may NOT use cellular phones & other electronic devices such as, but not limited to, smart watch, headphones, earbuds/air pods or smart glasses, during school hours.

Student Procedure: Upon entering each period/class, students will place their turned-off phone and/or all electronic devices in either a phone pouch or the storage case; all electronics devices will remain in the phone pouch or storage case for the entire duration of the period. At the end of the period, students will retrieve their devices in accordance with teacher procedures.” (East Valley High School, 2024).  East Valley High School’s policy for students to submit their phone to a designated area at the beginning of class heavily lines up with my own ideals for student phone usage. I agree fully with the enactment of this policy as I believe it will be best for students to not only have their phone put away completely in class but put away in every class. If I were to run a school, this is exactly the policy I would implement. I am thankful for this administration’s enforcement on limited cell-phone use as that backs the ideal rules I had already individually set for my own classroom, thus limiting the propensity of student defiance for this rule. If a student were to not follow this classroom rule, I would be confident that the administration would support me in the consequences since we are on the same page for when and how cell-phones should be used. I was anticipating, before reading the school’s policy, a struggle of addressing the students who defy putting their phones in the designated space for them. I am sure this is a problem I will still come across eventually, and have been brainstorming solutions for. I believe this will be challenging for me even if the admin is supportive because of my tendency to dislike discipline and to allow my boundaries to be overridden. However, I am working on my classroom management and ability to keep myself and students accountable for following shared rules we create. I believe having these conversations and constructing classroom rules collaboratively will help remove the barrier I feel when I have to enforce rules. As a person, I despise feeling “in-power” especially over young people. If, however, rules are made as a group, I can implement rules as an act of respecting one another and keeping each other accountable. 

References

East Valley High School. (2024, May 30). EVHS formally adopts & enforces the LAUSD student cell phone & smart watch policy. https://www.eastvalleyhs.net/apps/news/article/2030900