The Ready Desk

[Trigger warning: Curmudgeonly post—kids are hereby warned to "Stay off my lawn!"]

The world has changed. Students are increasingly inseparable from their phones. 24/7/365. Their phone is increasingly the center of their world. All other activities, such as instructional classroom time, are mere background variations—different atmospheres in which their ongoing phone activities are conducted.

At the same time, I find my students are performing more poorly with each passing year. This even as I begrudgingly excise material they find especially frustrating, and minnow the math to a bare minimum. I'm chasing, but they're outrunning me.

There are many factors at play here, and this post will not attempt to cover all of them. Instead, I'll go for one: phones in the classroom.

Many students—especially the boys—enter the classroom with earbuds dangling over their ears or chests. Their pre-wired to listen to the playlist they made especially for your class. Many take their seat and proceed to continue their ongoing text sessions. Many feign forgetting the "no phones in class" policy and need frequent reminders. They work hard to keep the phone on and active on their lap or setting atop their backpack angled so they can at least read the latest updates during class.

And increasingly, they help themselves to available outlets to charge their phones during class. The poor device has been under such heavy use in first and second periods that by third period, they need a serious recharge.

Many willingly risk a Saturday School referral because the chat is that important to them. They'll set their burgeoning backpack on the desk to create a hide for their phone. Or spend extended intervals utterly transfixed—eyes locked on their crotches. They are lost to the world in anticipation of a response. And they could pass a lie detector test not knowing why they are performing so poorly in class. They have absolutely no idea.

The world has changed. So I must acknowledge the change and take appropriate measures. Some teachers leverage the pacifying effect of allowing students to "phone out" (zone out via phone use). I'm keen to have them learn the material. For now, this means separating students from their phones while in my class.

The solution I'm honing? The Ready Desk. 

The Ready Desk is just my shorthand for students having what they should have in front of them during class. And—perhaps more importantly—not having what they should not have in front of them during class. It describes the state of their desk when they're ready to learn: The Ready Desk.

They need their pencil, today's handouts, their binder, and a scientific calculator. Nothing else. Everything else, including phones, textbooks, etc., can be stored in their pack, and their pack goes into The Rack.

I made space in my classroom to accommodate eight 4-cubby Ikea Kallas shelving units. That's space for 32 backpacks. I used the cubbies this year only for security situations (tests, exams, etc.). Next year, the rack will be an everyday thing.

An unintended benefit is the decluttering of the classroom desktop and floor space. Nothing to trip over; no more backpack "hides".

Will separating students from their packs force them—against their will—to engage in instruction? Probably not, but it might help many of them. Will some students redouble their efforts to maintain access to their fully operational phones? Probably, but they will need to be much more skilled than they need to be now. Is it a perfect solution will be free of any other possible unintended consequences? No.

But the tether between students and phones has become noticeably stronger each year. And student performance has declined. I am unwilling to do nothing about it, or wave a white flag of surrender.

Here is the handout I'll give to students early next year. (And by "next year," I mean approximately two months from now.)

The Ready Desk (PDF)

My "Information for Parents" folder, 09/2015 additions

I've created an Information for Parents folder in my Schoology "ecosystem" ("edusystem"?).

In it, I placed the information discussed in the post below. And links to

"Leaning Physics is Tough. Get Used to It" by Rhett Allain in WIRED

Yes, students learn physics by working on problems and by failing to solve problems. It’s the journey to the solution that’s important, not the solution itself. Using a video solution would be like using a golf cart to run 5 miles. Sure, you end up in the same place if you run or ride—but they do not produce the same results.

and

"Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges" by Peter Gray in Psychology Today

We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to learn how to solve their own problems. They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realize they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention. So now, here’s what we have. Young people,18 years and older, going to college still unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, still feeling that if a problem arises they need an adult to solve it.


There may be a theme building here. And I may be overcome by the tide. But for now, I'm standing strong.

The end of The System makes front-page news

The System was my homework/classwork/general incentive policy for about 20 years. I developed it in the early 1990s and was very happy with what it did. But I abandoned it this year, and the abandonment led to a front-page (below the fold) article in the school newspaper with two photographs.

Baird Terminates System

Because few things are as exciting as my 20-year old homework policy. Winning the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching did not result in nearly this much Mirada ink. Ah, the whimsical and fickle world of The Press.

The System was my attempt to encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. If you came to class on time, prepared to learn, and kept up with daily assignments, I'd grade you on a relaxed grading scale. Instead of the traditional grading scale, students who qualified for The System were graded as follows: 80%-100%: A, 60%-79%: B, 50%-59%: C, 40%-49%: D. In 20 years of The System, I could count on my fingers the number of students who qualified and earned a C or worse. My fingers on one hand.

My hope was that The System would make Physics an attractive course in that you could earn a pretty good grade (B) even if you routinely performed badly on tests, etc. (60%).

I gave out plenty of non-A or B grades. Many students elected to not partake in The System. With no immediate gratification ("Scoobie Snack") offered for homework completion, many students chose not to do it. Such a choice invariably leads to poor test performance, and sub-80% totals. But there was a lesson to be learned there, as well.

Homework was checked randomly and at random intervals. Different assignments were checked in different periods. Other elements folded easily into The System (tardiness, on-task behavior, excessive use of the bathroom pass, etc.).

Doing the right things earned you System Points. Angelic, perfect students could end up with 20 System Points at the end of each semester. To qualify, all you needed was 10. Ten out of twenty. Plenty of room for lapses of any sort. Great flexibility. But not unlimited.

Every semester would end with some students having 9 of the 20. They missed more than they earned. They naturally saw unfairness. If it were only for that one thing that one time. But it was never one thing one time. Their bargain with me was that they would behave in a manner so as to earn all the System Points.

Every student of Intro to Psychology is taught to despise B. F. Skinner, but Skinner works surprisingly well while "higher-minded" psychological schemes do not. Still we harbor a visceral hatred of what Skinner tells us: that we often operate so as to maximize extrinsic rewards and minimize extrinsic punishment. To oversimplify: psychologists despise Skinner; economists swear by him.

Over time students figured out ways to game The System. The Holy Grail in this pursuit was to qualify for the relaxed grading scale while not completing daily assignments. Assignments were copied, word for word, mistake for mistake, among students. Students with older siblings who took my class would turn in the older sibling's work as their own.

I could catch some of them by changing the numbers in my numerical problems. Cheaters would blissfully turn in homework with all the wrong numbers. No such cheater ever confessed to their transgression. But oh, the stories they would spin.

Changing the numericals for this purpose was a giant hassle; changing word questions was essentially impossible. All of it wasted time and energy spent to beat the cheats.

And as the years went by, students became less and less apologetic about copying homework. They were too busy with other things to be bothered with homework. Consider this student sentiment expressed by a Rio student, "Work is for school. I go to school to learn, but I go home to have fun. I don’t think homework helps. It really just ruins my day. It ruins my day 100% of the time."

Many parents take the position that there's too much homework. They're forever hoping for a school wide homework restriction policy.

Some teachers are in on this, too. A language teaching colleague complained that so much homework is tantamount to child abuse.

Another colleague invited us—his fellow teachers—to examine our homework practices. He invited his faculty piers to ponder these questions.

"How long will it take students (slowest AND fastest) to complete?
If all of a student's teachers assigned the same amount, how many hours would that take?
How much time is left for sleep, family and other interests that make up a full life?
Is the assignment absolutely necessary for the curriculum, or is it homework for homework's sake?"

When parents and teachers give comfort to the notion that there's too much homework, students feel entitled and licensed to subvert the homework load by any means necessary. "Of course I copied my homework, everyone knows the homework load is too ridiculous around here. My parents support me in this, and so do the cool teachers."

Since offering any extrinsic incentive ("sugar") for homework completion was resulting in more and more homework subversion, I had to pull the plug.

Front-page news.

An attempt to keep tests safe from cell phones

For years now, tests/exams administered in classroom settings have been susceptible to public distribution by cheaters who would photograph them on their cell phones and broadcast them.

I gave a student a zero on a test years ago because she was texting during a test. Her mother demanded a conference to plead her case. The parent went so far as to suggest I should have confiscated the child's phone, accessed the text messages, determined said messages were not test-related, and allowed her daughter to go about her business. I politely declined any such suggestion and proceeded with my original plan. Both parent and child were furious with my outrageous inflexibility.

My friend, Dan Burns, teaches at Los Gatos High School. He recently posted this to the PTSOS Discussion Group:

"Phones must be in backpacks, purses etc. These are put in a location out of arm's reach from where they are testing. Any student caught with a phone during a test is given a zero on the test and a cheating referral. No exceptions, no excuses. This is how the the CSET and other professional tests are administered. The important thing is to explain this in detail to students before applying these rules. Make sure your admin backs you up. Before they start any test they are given a verbal reminder and a chance to put their phone away. Once the test is handed out, any student caught with a phone on their person gets a zero. It is assumed they took pictures, distributed them and then deleted them. You do not need to catch them in the act."

Is it perfect? Completely impervious to a determined cheater's capabilities? I doubt it. But it's better than allowing them easy access to a camera/wireless distribution device during an assessment. It is something. And that's better than nothing.