Dear colleague,
The other day I used this article (Drive) to get the Article of the Week going this year. I liked it in that it helped establish an us-versus-the-world culture in my classroom on the issue of cell phones and how they tend to harm human connection. We don't use the cell phone garage so Mr. Stuart can control your life; we use it so that we all can be free from the negative side effects we experience in our phone-as-drug world.
The article is about phubbing. And if you're like, “What the heck is phubbing?” I was, too. According to article author Angela Haupt, phubbing is when someone snubs or ignores you via the use of their phone. It could be while you're riding in the car, at the lunch table, at a meeting, or in the middle of a hallway conversation. For those of you who have either been phubbed or been a phubber, you know the effects — it's a bad deal. In a world where our souls crave connection and human attention, phubbing happens because those deeper needs aren't as loud as the ever present deficit of dopamine that our phones get us feening for.
Though I don't agree with all of Haupt's “10 Things to Say When Someone Won't Get Off Their Phone” (a few just seem blatantly passive aggressive to me), the article generated some good Think-Pair-Share discussion in the classroom.
Sharing in case it helps.
Teaching right beside you,
DSJR
P.S. Thank you to Kim Marshall, whose memo introduced me to Haupt's article.
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