Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Reminder 101 Text Messaging

If you'd prefer to not give your child a phone, you can get a free Google Voice account, which will provide a phone number for voice & text.

With it, you can send & receive unlimited text messages for free and even have incoming text messages forwarded to an email account of your choosing.

This would enable your child to participate, yet not have the same exposure (financial & otherwise) of a regular cell phone.

Dandy

http://www.google.com/voice/
(No affiliation, just a long-time user.)

I really like this aspect of it! My ds is in 7th grade and doesn't have a cell phone, but he could send the text reminder to his email account as mentioned above. Although ds' teachers don't send out reminder texts at this point, they do communicate frequently to the students via student email accounts. It really has been a good thing for my ds in terms of taking parents out of the reminder equation, and also has helped the students with turning to each other for help on homework etc at night instead of parents - they email each other when they have a question.

My only concern would be that all the students have access via internet or phone.

polarbear

I wanted to get opinions because I have two problems with it. First, she is texting students without parental consent. I think the teacher should have involved the parents first and let them decide if it was appropriate for their children. Second, it seems that by doing this activity in class, she's separated those that "have" from those that "have not". Middle school has enough social divisions without this type of thing.

I appreciate that she's trying to relate to them on their level and take the onus off the parents. I just don't like the way in which she did it.

Thanks for the suggestions of alternate ways to receive the information. I'll look into them. No way is son responsible enough for a cell phone yet.

The haves and have-nots are separated a million different ways by technology-first school programs. This is only one of many. (Teachers in our middle school's gifted math program, for example, strongly suggested buying laptops and graphing calculators-- in a school with >70% free/reduced lunch). I'm not sure what the best option is, but I'm fairly sure this isn't it.

I get the point about wanting to have parental consent first, and I agree that if it were my kid I would want to get copied on everything sent to her (at least for now--she's only 9!) but to be honest we have had some teachers who just didn't give a darn about the students (or at least about DD), so when I hear about a teacher who is trying to give them some responsibility and help them meet deadlines, etc., I think the teacher should get a gold star or something. Our school also sends texts and we don't have a text plan because of the $$, but you can have them sent to an email account so it works out. The kids who don't have computers, though, would really seem to be at an extra disadvantage. The computers at our public library seem to always be in use for people playing video games, plus our public libraries are scattered pretty widely, and most of them are nowhere near a school, so good luck getting there on your own after school, kid. It seems like there should be more attention to this issue by the schools than just saying you can go the library to do your homework.

I hadn't thought about it this way - that the teacher should be commended as caring enough to be involved.

It's interesting. Friends I've talked to about it have been divided into two camps. Those with younger children (under age 10) have not liked it at all, seeing all kinds of issues with the teacher being able to text and kids having cell phones, and the parents not being included. Those with older children seem to shrug and say, "it's what they do, might not like it but impossible to change".

Yes, but even older children generally lack the following two things:

(1) The ability to enter into contracts
and
(2) Money

I am working with a local philanthropic group who took on one of the poorest schools in our district to help create a better support system for the children and parents. One of the surprising things they found in their initial survey is that more families had smart phones than had permanent addresses. To that end, we are developing a free smart phone app for easier access to school content and breaking information. The school will be able to send out instant push notices through the app for things like closures, emergencies, school meetings, etc.

Will the app serve the entire community? No. But it will be a great tool for those who can use it - and that user base is growing exponentially even in a high poverty demographic. The school still supports a website, email notices, phone call notices, in-school paper bulletin board, etc., but that shouldn't prevent innovation until it is accessible to 100% of the population.

If you're uncomfortable with the SMS reminders to your child's phone, just say no. It is your choice - and it should be your choice. If you don't pay for texting and don't want to use a web-based texting service like Google Voice, then don't. That is also a very acceptable decision. It is your kid, your family, your comfort level.

But what I would suggest is not using a broad brush to paint it as a bad idea because it doesn't fit where you are right now. For another parent with a kid who forgets everything, this may be the Holy Grail of solutions.

Wow. Refresh my memory - what is middle school? Is it 6,7,8? We just have elementary (K-7) and high school (8-12). Anyway, our principal (we're still in K-7) will take cell phones away if he catches kids with them (he keeps them in the office where they can retrieve them at 3:00)

I see a time in the near future when I'll want my kids to have them (we're not there yet, but I can't imagine them going all the way to 7 without one). Not sure how we'll handle it. Maybe we'll have a new principal by then

Our kids (in grades 3 and 5) are also marked on this. The idea is that it counts towards their "personal responsibility" score, as in it's up to them to chase after us for signatures. DS8 is really awful at this (strangely, he'd be more responsible with a cell phone). DD9 is pretty good though - she always asks me if I've signed her stuff.