If you leave your iPhone on your desk, unattended, it’s your own damn fault if it gets stolen.
1. Electronic devices like that aren’t allowed in school.
2. Since you’re not supposed to have it in school, I don’t care if someone took it!
3. If you get it back, you should be smart enough to learn the lesson that you should have never had it out in the first place!
Did the lesson get learned today? I’m not sure. Who was the thief?
Me.
Sometimes I just can’t resist a little joking with the kids to teach them a lesson. Larry had left his iPhone on his desk and was trying to win a CD for New Tunes Tuesday on our morning announcements. That involves being the 3rd caller to the room that does the tv production stuff. So Larry had gone to the phone to call. The iPhone is just sitting there. I couldn’t just leave it. It was too enticing to pass up! So I casually walk by and grab it. I was just going to shut the thing off, but honestly, I couldn’t figure out how. I did see that he was on Facebook… So I decided to just put it in my drawer under my overhead projector for the time being.
Larry comes back to his desk and realizes that the iPhone has disappeared. He starts asking his friends and they all play along and say they don’t have it. I innocently ask, “Larry, what’s going on?”
“Nothin’.” – he’s obviously starting to worry.
I let him squirm for a few minutes. Timing is everything here. You don’t want them to work themselves into a tizzy. Once they’ve gone off the deep end with worry about losing their expensive gadget you never know if you can get them back. Plus, his friends were going to cave.
“Larry, is this what you’re looking for?” – iPhone in my hand, twinkle in my eye.
Relief comes across his face. He’s darn lucky that it’s me who has his toy. But for now, it’s mine. So it gets locked in the closet for the remainder of the period. A small price to pay for leaving your iPhone unattended.
October 20, 2009 at 9:16 pm
There’s a silver button at the top, on the right. Hold it down for about three seconds and then when the message comes up, swipe your finger across the screen. Probably not the easiest thing to do on the sly if you’ve never done it before.
You should get one for yourself. I don’t know what I’d do without mine.
October 23, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I too love my iPhone, but it will not work at our school so I keep it in my purse, in my office.
As for leaving things out, I had one of my multimedia cameras stolen, in another classroom, because the kid left it sitting on a desk. The darn teacher for the room didn’t have the gumption to find it either.
My students are real good about turning in equipment and such that they find at their work spot if they come in and it has been left behind. I think it all has to do with training.
November 28, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I caught a student texting in my 6th hour class last week. I decided to teach her a lesson by making her retrieve her phone from the principal. On the way downstairs she received a text. I had someone help me send the text “This is E–’s teacher. Stop texting her or I will hunt you down.” I hunted him down anyway. After I dropped off the phone, I discovered the texter was a student in my school. I called his class and told him that he should report to his administrator the next day and drop off his phone for the day, which he did. At the end of the day my student yelled at me. She said her friend “got in big trouble.” She told me that her texts were personal and that I had no right to look at them and did I do that to everyone whose phone I confiscated.
My response was that it was good that her friend got in trouble, I did look at the texts of other students phones (I answer their calls too and ask their parents not to call during class) and I told her administrator what she did and my response. (I should have told her to call her mother to discuss the problem.) My principal said I should have written her up.
November 29, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Oh yes, and the student’s administrator congratulated me for “great detective work.”