Make Face-to-Face Teaching Cool Again!

We are expecting kids to divert attention from the power of the internet to something “boring,” like listening to the teacher.

D.C. on a hike

It seems like not a week goes by without another news article sounding a half-hearted and belated alarm on the youth mental health crisis. The articles rarely offer more than an inventory of the state of things, choosing to remain silent on what the causes might be.

At Restore Childhood we are delving into causes and more importantly, how to implement changes that will restore a sense of self, connection and positive development in childhood.

Here, sharing her views on some much needed changes is D.C., a school based speech-language pathologist and mother of two teenagers. Please share your own ideas with us after you’ve read today’s post!

Recently, there was a summit about teen mental health and screen time presented by Bright and Quirky. I only stumbled across it after seeing a post on Instagram.  It was free for the first 24 hours following each day, so every morning I logged in and listened to as many speakers as I could from the previous day. 

Teen mental health is something I am very interested in, and concerned about, since I work with a lot of teens and have two teenagers myself.  As a mom and school based speech-language pathologist, I’ve observed many kids struggle with managing their screen time.

Clearly there is a mental health crisis in teens - it’s become a hot topic over the past few years with our own Surgeon General recently sending out a warning about social media and its harms on kids.

Social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt has been writing about this for a while too. I urge everyone to read his book, co-authored with Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind.   Haidt’s new Substack, After Babel, continues on to provide great research connecting social media and mental health, especially when it comes to teen girls. 

Haidt traces the spike in mental health issues starting around the year 2012, with the introduction of the flip camera to selfie mode on smartphones.  It was also around this time that posts could easily go viral with the “share” button, Instagram was created, and social media really took off.

I don’t think we fully understood at the time what impact that would have on teens. However many of us watching it unfold knew there could be some very negative consequences.

Around 2012, working in public schools, I noticed another trend.  The push from administrators to go 1:1 in high schools. This meant that each student in high school would be matched with their own device, such as a laptop or chrome book. It was cutting edge and I watched as these administrators seemed to place their value on their careers by getting this mission accomplished ~ I mean, come on, we were at the beginnings of the digital age and students needed to be pioneers in it!  

You know that sinking feeling you get in your gut when you feel like something is wrong? 

I had that feeling back then.  I didn’t fully understand it at the time but I had it.

I have focused much of my career supporting adolescents and teens with social relationships. And I had that gnawing feeling that the more time that kids spent looking at a device rather than people, the more that what we all innately need and crave, real human face to face connection, would be unfulfilled.

I don’t remember exactly when it all happened (I have an inkling that “virtual learning” due to Covid policies put us on a warp speed) but the 1:1 initiative is no longer just for high school. Across the country, children in grades as early as 4th or 5th, are now 1:1 as well.   

Because of this, new teaching technologies are being implemented.  Reading tests that can intuitively adjust to a child's reading level are being used. Math programs that do the same are also pushed.  Kids are now using computers for more than just a tool to write papers. In fact, kids as young as 5 are now being evaluated in statewide tests using computers.

I kid you not. 

The thought makes me shudder and really does feel dystopian but it is happening. 

Being 1:1 means that children, as young as 10, are given a device that they become responsible for.  Sure, teachers are not using devices the entire class time to teach but since more curriculums are online and don’t actually come with physical books, teachers are forced to embed the technology in what they are teaching.  So these devices are open and accessible throughout a child’s day.

A google search shows that as of 2023, there are over 567,000 “educational” apps available on line.  This is a billion dollar business that I would argue adds little value to education. In fact, I would guess they cause more harm than good.  The creators behind these apps know that to make money, they need to keep kids engaged with screens.  They design these “educational” games in pretty packages to lure kids onto them.  

So what happens when you give a 10 year old with a diagnosis of ADHD or ASD, or even a neurotypical child, a computer in class? As you can imagine the battle for their attention is constant.  We are expecting kids to divert their attention from the power of the internet to something they may consider “boring,” like listening to the teacher.

It is not fair to expect kids to be able to resist.  They can’t.  Heck, most adults can’t either. 

Think about what you do during that dull work meeting when you have your laptop open…you know that you are diverting your attention to something else you find more entertaining online than your boring co-worker or boss!

I walk through the hallways of the middle school I work in and what I see makes my heart ache.  Kids in English, on their computers.  Kids in math, on their computers.  Kids in art… on their computers.

I don’t blame the teachers either, they have no choice but to use these devices given to every child.  But now when kids have down time,  they are on them.  They are not picking up a book to read.  They are not interacting with each other. They are not folding paper to make a small football to flick back and forth to each other. 

They are looking at a device.

There is research that shows our brains learn better when we use all of our senses, it’s called multisensory learning.  The act of writing on paper helps create pathways in the brain that can help solidify what we are learning. It is an intricate perceptual sensorimotor process that is an important part of the cognitive learning process.  Kids benefit greatly from writing to learn and this part of learning gets lost when we just tap letters on a keyboard.

Technology is wonderful but it is not everything. We need to go back to paper/pencil tasks, we need to have actual physical books to read. We shouldn’t proudly hand computers over to 10 year olds and expect them to fight the app designers that are working so hard to steal their attention. 

This actually feels like something we can easily change, especially in middle school and younger. Let’s not give kids free range on computers. Rather, what if we just let them use them when needed, like writing a paper or doing research.  Other than that, give them paper and a pencil!  Teach them how to write in cursive. Teach them how to copy definitions rather than cut and paste.  Teach them how to look up a definition in a dictionary rather than using google. Teach them how to deal with boring moments, isn’t that where our creativity comes from? 

Of course they will have these tools when they get older but skills are still important. It won’t fix everything but it is a start and it would give their brains a much needed break. 

We are humans and our brains crave real human social interaction.  Let’s make face to face teaching cool again.