With the school year over, countless students will binge on movies, television and video games during their summer break. Many will also have endless access to cellphones that would be off-limits if they were in class.
One educator in the nations capital wants to curb the tech deluge.
Diana Smith, principal at Washington Latin Public Charter School, pledged to pay her students $100 each out of her own pocket if they forgo electronics and video screens each Tuesday until school resumes at the end of August.
I dont like when teachers bribe their students with food, so I am breaking my own rules, Smith said in an interview. But I do think they need help with this particular relationship.
Smith, who has led the D.C. charter school since 2008, is concerned that teenagers are addicted to their phones. They are losing sleep because they are texting in the middle of the night. Social media has intensified middle and high school drama.
I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the ubiquity of the phones in their lives, she said.
Latin, in Northwest, enrolls students from fifth to 12th grade. During the middle schools summer send-off assembly, Smith told her seventh- and eighth-grade students (and their parents) about her pledge. The parents cheered, she said. Some also heard grumbling as students realized what it would take to earn a Benjamin.
Thats 11 whole days of no phones, computers, tablets, video games or television. If the students are not at home, theyll have to figure out how to contact their parents. At the end of the summer, two adults over the age of 21 will have to send a letter to Smith certifying that Tuesdays were tech-free.
Latin enrolled 180 seventh- and eighth-graders in the past school year, but only those returning in August are eligible. Smith estimates thats 160 kids, which means theoretically she could be out $16,000.
