For Educators

Be the mobilizer your school community needs

Imagine all the ways your school can support families on the journey to healthy tech use.  Consider the ideas below and lean in where it most resonates.

Calling all school leaders!

Today’s parents have been put in an impossible situation. A family’s personal choices around tech adoption (e.g., when to get a smartphone for a child or when to allow social media) are deeply affected by community norms. It’s nearly impossible for families to resist the pressure of “everyone-else-ism” on their own. Parents desperately need leadership, and a community-based approach is what’s missing and most effective!

Schools are key community structures that families are part of. Parents would be extremely grateful if school leaders would consider “steering the ship” for the school community. Your leading the way towards age-appropriate norms would make all the difference for struggling parents. Reach out to ScreenSense (info@screensense.org) if you’d like a thinking partner!

Here is what one K-8 school leader is doing: At the start of the 2023-24 school year, Mount Tamalpais School’s Head of School added “digital wellbeing” to the school’s strategic plan. A new concrete priority became to “support students and families in developing a productive, intentional, and healthy relationship with technology both on and off campus.” The school's efforts are three-fold: (1) an audit of tech use on campus, (2) parent and student education events, and (3) guidelines for technology use at home. You can learn more details on the school’s Technology webpage. The Head of School has essentially offered for parents to “blame the school” while providing healthier community norms for a course correction. This kind of community leadership and collective action is making all the difference for MTS families!

Struggling with smartphones at your school?

In this new era of ubiquitous personal devices, students are easily distracted away from academics and in-person socialization by the nonstop temptation of games and social media in their pockets. Educators meanwhile face the frustrating task of enforcing phone policies at school. Both deserve better. As a result, tremendous momentum is growing around making schools phone-free to preserve this context for learning and healthy development, and to teach young people they don’t need access to their phones all the time. Reach out to ScreenSense (info@screensense.org) for support while navigating this thorny issue!

Need a rationale? Watch The Case for Phone Free Schools (March 2024) and read Get Phones Out of Schools Now by Jonathan Haidt (June 2023). Another go-to resource is Away for the Day, founded by Delaney Ruston, the filmmaker behind Screenagers.

Need a creative solution? Invest in phone lockers or Yondr, lockable phone pouches. You’ll need to partner with parents, get teachers on board, and explain why this is essential to students.

Distributing school devices to families?

If so, please make sure you are supporting parents and caregivers when they bring these new devices into their homes. Reach out to ScreenSense (info@screensense.org) if you need help providing a training program for families so they can effectively manage a school-issued device at home. Families do much better with school devices if they are informed about how built-in tools like Apple Screen Time work, how to optimize notifications and reduce needless disruptions, and how to set rules and limits to support their child’s digital wellbeing.

We can also custom-create an orientation handout for families that you can send home along with each distributed device.

Our top recommendation? Have students give their parents a “tour” of their school device. Also, please make sure your school devices do not allow access to time-zapping apps and platforms like YouTube, SnapChat, Instagram, and TikTok.

Teaching digital wellbeing?

Drowning in EdTech and need a new approach?

It’s helpful to pause and reconsider how you approach EdTech so your school is being intentional and selective. Do you have a tech use philosophy and plan in place? Reach out to ScreenSense if you need a thinking partner. Some of our go-to resources include:

• The Ed Tech Triangle, a research-based EdTech framework with guardrails by Everyschool;

• Fairplay’s Screens in Schools Action Kit, a toolkit to educate and advocate for changes in EdTech use.

The Center for Humane Technology (CHT) suggests, among other things, that schools should:

• Audit their use of tech — e.g., is what they’re implementing achieving what it was meant to?

• Pay attention to what they’re potentially losing as they’re gaining tech.

• Approach tech in schools with a skeptical eye — i.e., don’t assume it will necessarily improve the learning experience just because it’s tech.