Ms. Deborah Haislip
Ted 414 Classroom Management
Dr. Sapp
Individual Behavior Management Plan
3 August 2016
The Student and the Behavior
Cameron is a 9th grade remedial English student. He shows that he is not too shy to
participate in class and his enthusiasm for watching his classmates participate is
evident. However, he loves to text/browse during class. The school does not have a
policy against cell phones, so students are allowed to have their devices on their desks
if they wish. Texting/browsing is an obvious distraction. When the teacher tells him to
put it away or focus, Cameron shifts his phone under his desk to text/browse more
discreetly.
My Perspective
I’m a millennial; I love my phone. A phone feels like an extension of myself. I
understand that being forced to put my phone away makes me feel fidgety. Social
media notifications cause a small release of dopamine, so like lab rats reaching for the
button that releases sugar water, I check my phone constantly. This is something that
takes patience and effort to lower the frequency of. I have no issue against allowing
students to have their phones out, if school policy does not forbid it, but Cameron needs
to become more engaged in the lesson.
Function of the Behavior
This behavior functions to distract from the current situation. Cameron has failed this
class before and so he either lacks the confidence to become fully engaged in a class
he has failed or reviewing this class all over again is boring and not engaging. By texting
or browsing, Cameron shows that he is more engaged by a stagnant Instagram feed
than the lesson. A device also provides belonging, according to Choice Theory,
because of the connection the student feels to their friends and youth culture on social
media.
Two Teacher’s Perspectives

“First, Ms. Carol will give them a verbal warning to stop checking their phone or
she will have to keep the phone in her desk for the rest of the period. Then if Ms.
Carol sees them check again, she takes the phone and puts it in her desk.”
– Miryam H., Antioch Unified School District, 14 year veteran Aid, my mom!

“I have students keep busy, so busy that they don’t have time to waste. We all
know that students compulsively use their phones when they feel it’s “down time”
so my lesson plans always include a string of tasks.”
-
Heather S., Green Dot Los Angeles, 5 year veteran Teacher
Strategies to Modify Behavior
This is something that I will discuss with my students when we collaborate on creating
classroom rules. I want to be on the level – checking your phone is not a bad thing, it is
not malicious, it is not mean spirited or offensive, but the problem is that it
disenfranchises their quality of education. The precursor to learning is attention. So one
main thing I want to change in the classroom is how cell phones can be used.
Cell phones are amazing computers. The smartphone is a million times faster than
NASA’s Apollo era processors. I want to teach that such amazing computing power is
more than just an Instagram machine.
-
-
-
-
Student Response Systems (SRS), common brands like Sentio and
eInstruction use clickers to gather multiple choice answers. There are free
options that use cell phones. Use the cell phone for SRS whether multiple
choice as in polleverywhere.com or a teacher screen where students send
written response to the shared board in answerpad.com –by making the cell
phone an ally, students are too busy to mess around if they’re phones have to
be used to participate.
Teach research skills using the cell phone in class. Students are welcome to
use their device to frontload before a lesson. Make it routine to use the phone
to frontload. Start every class period with a warm-up think-pair-share, then
introduce what will be covered today and give the students 5 minutes to
frontload for the lesson using their devices.
Have a lesson on compulsive phone use, and the science behind why we’re
so addicted to checking our phones. This lesson will serve to explain why our
desire to check our phones constantly is an addiction that can be controlled in
the classroom, an environment for learning not social media.
When a student is using their phone to distract themselves, have tasks
prepared to assign to that student. Jobs such as collecting the data from the
SRS, creating the next couple of prompts for the SRS, passing out papers,
choosing that day’s exit-slip prompt, reading the SRS questions aloud, etc.
The reason to do this is not to punish the student per say, but to re-engage
them – besides most students enjoy having jobs. This fulfills the behavioral
function of belonging, according to Glasser’s Choice Theory.
Online Resources
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2013/03/6-free-ways-to-capture-student.html
http://www.teachhub.com/how-use-cell-phones-learning-tools
https://www.polleverywhere.com/
References
Glasser, William. Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom. 1998