The first statement for this week’s debate is “Educators have a responsibility to use technology and social media to promote social justice and fight oppression.” In this article from the pro side makes a lot of good points about making a classroom community where you talk about social justice issues openly with students, which I think is the most important thing. I personally think that advocating for social justice issues on social media should come second to advocating for social justice in real life. On the other side there is this article that talks about not everyone needs to be a social justice advocate. I think that teachers should be able to advocate for social justice and to an extent they should, but they shouldn’t be responsible for advocating for social justice issues specifically on social media.

The second part of this debate was if cellphones should be allowed in schools, since this is a three-way debate (never allowed, not allowed in k-8, and always allowed) I think that cellphones should not be allowed in k-8 classrooms (check out this article) there are a lot of good points on all sides of this debate, but if cellphones are banned in all grades that is unrealistic especially for high school students because like it or not most students are going to rebel against this rule and use their phones anyway, but if you allow them for all grades you end up with very young kids using their phones when they don’t know when and what it is appropriate to use them. The more time goes by the more time needs to be spent on teaching students when it is appropriate to use their phones.

The main reason I feel that phones should not be banned in high school is the personal experience I had when I was in high school. I found that the teachers who respected that students had a phone and didn’t make a big deal about it, were the teachers who did not have an issue with students using their phones in class all the time and it is disrupting the class. I had this one teacher that had a very strict no phones policy in the classroom. This was the teacher who had the most issues with students using their phones in class and often the teacher made such a big deal about it that it ended up disrupting the entire class on a daily basis. I don’t think that restricting phone use is a bad thing but when it is used to the extreme the restriction itself tends to be a bigger distraction.