"Beckham was being bossy and said that he's the leader of everyone even though he's not." "Samantha said, 'Scram!' to Maverick." "Evan has two erasers in his pencil pouch." Teacher Laurel Bates loves to hear every word her kids tell her ... as long as they do it via her tattlephone, of course. "They feel seen and I stay sane," Bates tells TODAY.com.
"It's just like a neverending game of musical chairs," Jensen says. Just when a teacher thinks they've perfected their seating chart, two neighboring students will have a fight, others won't stop talking or parents will email with their own seating preferences. "There's just so many things that you don't know on the surface that come to light really quickly once you put a kid next to another one," she says.
At a time when school cellphone bans or limits are the law in California public schools and in at least 34 other states - a growing national movement to get distracted students off their devices and focused on learning - Harvard-Westlake has found a way to enforce their restrictions by turning to - what else? - a mobile app that partially locks down phones and flags the front office when students attempt to break the rules.
Many schools respond to misbehavior by assigning detention, where students are required to sit still and keep to themselves. But one school counselor in Maine, Leslie Trundy, is offering a different option: detention hikes. Trundy's novel approach captured national media attention when she began offering students the option to join her for hikes on nearby trails. A year-and-a-half into this novel offering, the results are compelling: Fewer students have been receiving detention since the new option was introduced, and teachers have observed more positive engagement in the days following hikes. While there has not yet been a formal research study to quantify the impact, detention hikes appear to be a meaningful, relational alternative that supports students while connecting them to the benefits of time in nature and physical movement.
The most glaring of these are when parents complain to a teacher or administrator about a behavior rule being enforced and push back against it. An example is when a student violates the technology AUP (Acceptable Use Policy), and the teacher enforces the consequence. Let's say a student uses a school device in an unacceptable way, such as to bully another student online. The student is expected to accept the punishment as stated in the AUP to reteach behavioral expectations.
I can't just glance at my phone anymore, or quickly send a message during break. At first, many students asked what the point of it was. But with time, many have come to realize that it's not so bad, and that it actually has quite a few benefits.
Over 80% of Middlebury College students use generative AI for coursework, according to a recent survey I conducted with my colleague and fellow economist Zara Contractor. This is one of the fastest technology adoption rates on record, far outpacing the 40% adoption rate among U.S. adults, and it happened in less than two years after ChatGPT's public launch. Although we surveyed only one college, our results align with similar studies, providing an emerging picture of the technology's use in higher education.
Students surveyed who scored highly on the Dark Triad traits of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism were significantly more likely to use AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney to complete their assignments.
