Dear Dr. Laura,
I fully support your position on homeschooling. However, if you don't have brain power at home, it is left to us public school teachers. Here is a transcript from my conferences:
Parents: How can our child get her grade up?
Me: As I have expressed in our previous email exchanges, she is enraptured with her cellphone and does not pay attention to me, not does she do any work due to the videos, images or text messaging she is engaged in.
Parents: She needs a phone in case she gets sick.
Me: Does she suffer from a condition? Does the phone administer medicine?
Parents: No.
Me: How often does she fall ill?
Parents: We just mean if she gets the flu.
Me: But she'd be in the nurse's office and they would call you. There are phones all over the building, especially in the office.
Parents: So how can she raise her grade from an F?
Me: She needs to leave the phone at home or perhaps you can get her just a phone and not having access to whatever she is looking at while we are working on the lesson.
Parents: She needs the phone so she knows which one of us is picking her up after school.
Me: You aren't able to tell her in the morning?
Parents: No.
Me: Don't you have a set pick up spot? She should know your car or cars.
Parents: How can she raise her grade?
Me: She. Cannot. If. She. Has. That. Phone.
Mary
