While the students ushered into my classroom, I erased the whiteboard with the bright blue brush provided by the school. The new brushes were magnetic, which meant that you could simply stick them to the board wherever you wanted. Convenient, I guess, since it freed up the ledge for other useful things like metre sticks, abandoned pencils, and gum wrappers. The brush was a fancy space age design, with crisp lines and biodegradable plastic. Too bad it couldn’t erase a board. Considering how many black streaks were left behind, I could just as easily have used paper towel or one of my shop rags. Progress, my ass!
The bell rang, which meant that break time was over and it was time for physics. I walked over to the door and began to close it, to block out the absolute chaos of sprinting students in the hallway who were screaming obscenities at the top of their lungs. But just before the door closed, fingers from an unseen hand curled around the door like some kind of horror movie.
“Please,” came the frantic voice. “Don’t close the door yet, Mr. G.”
I sighed and opened it back up, sad in the knowledge that any tranquility I might have achieved by closing the door was denied to me. Mark skulked by me, apologizing profusely and thanking me, all in one breath. He was chronically tardy and in serious need of therapy.
“Do you know what time it is, Mr. Prader?” I asked, pointing at the clock above the doorway.
He glanced up and gave me a completely blank look.
“What’s the problem?” I probed.
With a sheepish look, he said, “I cannot read one of those clocks.”
I was aghast. Here was a reasonably intelligent 16 year old boy who was completely ignorant about the function of an analog clock. I was tempted to instruct him right then and there, saying that the little hand was at the 10 and the big hand was at the 5, but today we were wearing pink to help fight bullying in school, and I figured that my actions would be in direct opposition to what the shirt was proclaiming.
“Well, just have a seat and try not to be late again, okay?” I said, all smiles and charms, the great actor on his little classroom stage. Shakespeare would have been proud.
I grabbed my collection of whiteboard markers, all collected in a bundle with an elastic, and turned to the class. “This is a very exciting moment, everyone,” I said. “We are ready to start our study of physics. It is time to understand the very mechanics of the physical universe, from the microscopic to the cosmological.”
I looked around the room, seeking out a smile or a nod or a glimmer in a student’s eyes, but it was an educational apocalypse. None of the students were looking at me at all. About 80% of them were staring into their phones, completely oblivious to the teacher or each other. Some had massive headphones on, large enough to deny students behind them a view of the board, and they were bobbing their heads as if in a trance to some death metal band who was probably screaming out 50 ways to torture and torment a teacher and still get away with it. And there were even a few who wore dark shades, and who were sitting catatonically, staring off into space – they were either dead or under the influence of some serious hallucinogenic drugs, or both.
I slammed my hand down on the demonstration desk in front of me. It was a gentle slam, I assure you. No bones were broken in the process.
“All phones away, headphones off, and all eyes on me, please.”
The groan that erupted from the class was a cross between the sounds of the undead, eager to rend the flesh from my body, and the low frequency rumbles of an earthquake as it shakes apart my school from its very foundations. But it was a reaction, it was a response, which meant that communication was happening and being registered in their video game saturated, sleep deprived adolescent brains.
I took out my black marker, which was my favourite colour for making notes, and began to write on the board. I prided myself on my writing. The words were written in a large font, each letter unmistakable, and I wrote the words in a near-perfect horizontal line, which is no easy thing to do. I was known for highly structured notes, beautiful straight lines, and impeccable circles. A teacher could do worse than to have those things mentioned in his epitaph.
“Uh Mr. G?” came a voice from behind me.
I stifled a sigh and turned to face the class, searching out the source of interruption. It was a boy in the very back corner of the room. I had no idea what his name was. I mean, that was what the seating plan was for, right?
“Yes?” I said.
“Are we supposed to be taking notes?” he asked. A few students snickered.
“Well, unless you have a photographic memory, I would highly recommend it,” I responded.
He then dove into his backpack, which was under his desk, and up came his laptop. Other students, inspired by his actions, brought out various kinds of technologies: iPads, chromebooks, and laptops popped up on desks everywhere. It was a veritable plague of computers, the worst kind of virus. And I was the cure.
“What are you guys doing?” I said in exasperation.
“Taking notes, just like you said,” one student said.
“No, no, no,” I said, waving my arms around like I was being attacked by wasps. “Put those vile things away. They will have no place in my physics classroom. This place will be an oasis in the world’s online desert.”
As the devices were being returned to their bags, a groan emanating from them once again, I opened the top drawer of my demonstration desk and brought out a sheaf of papers. I then opened the middle drawer and brought out an assortment of discarded writing utensils, some chewed, others cracked, but they were all still functional. No batteries or recharging required.
“If you need paper and something to write with, please come on up and grab them.”
The walk to the front of the room was a glacier moving down a slope, a sloth climbing a tree, and the drip of frozen molasses. I could see the small hand of the clock moving far too quickly, and the chances of me finishing this lesson dwindling to a Hail Mary pass and a lottery win. But after an epoch, their butts were back in their seats as they pondered how to hold these unfamiliar utensils called pens and pencils, like they were four-dimensional Rubik’s cubes.
Things settled down as I began to write about life-saving topics like mass and inertia and forces. After one board was filled with the wisdom of the ancients, I figured I would take a break and allow the students’ hands to rest before there was any serious cramping. I certainly did not want any complaints from parents, bemoaning the fact that their precious Sally or Johnny-boy was unable to play volleyball because their fingers were fatigued and sore. An unrivalled catastrophe to be sure, and one to avoid at all costs.
So, I wrapped up my markers with the elastic, and then I went to my demo desk and stacked 8 wooden blocks on top of each other. I then grabbed a wooden mallet.
“I am going to strike the bottom block with this mallet. Can you predict what will happen?”
The crickets were particularly loud this time of year, which was strange since it was the middle of winter.
I shrugged and proceeded to smack the bottom block, causing the block to fly off the desk and onto the floor (and fortunately, not into one of the students’ eyes, which would have been a lawsuit and the end of my career), while the rest of the blocks simply fell straight downward and remained stacked on each other.
Satisfied that physics had worked (since we all know the maxim: if it moves, it is biology; if it stinks, it is chemistry; and if it doesn’t work, it is physics), I said to the class, “Okay, I want you to talk to the partner beside you. Explain what just happened, using the ideas of Newton.”
I then went and sat down in my office chair, happy to take a break while the students shared their thoughts about the demonstration. But, after sighing in relaxation’s bliss, I looked up and noticed that none of the students were doing what I asked. Instead, they had gone into their bags and brought their phones out, and they were showing each other the images these instruments contained while talking and laughing animatedly.
“Hey, G. Check out this video.”
Before I could say anything, the student was projecting a video on the wall, using his phone. It was the very same demo, but with more blocks and a much more attractive teacher. And the teacher was in the process of explaining how it all worked.
“No, no, turn that off …” was all I could say, because in an instant, videos started sprouting up on any bare surface on the walls in my classroom until it was looking like some king of modern museum, where all the art pieces have been replaced with digital media.
“Look, someone is doing the demo at the top of a mountain.”
“Hey, check it out. Look what happens to the block when it gets hits in the International Space Station.”
“Dude, check out this cat video!”
Cat video? Okay, things were getting totally out of hand (or paw, as it were).
“Okay class, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the topic. But I need you to put your phones away so that we can continue the lesson.”
Talk about inertia. Once those phones were out, it was almost impossible for them to be put back into their bags. Once a phone is on, it tends to remain on until the battery runs out.
The volume in the room came down to a dull roar, which meant I could move on the the second phase in the lesson. I began to fill up the middle whiteboard with more nuggets of physics knowledge and things were going smoothly.
Until I picked up a faint buzzing near my right ear. Irritated, thinking a mosquito or hornet had entered my classroom, I flicked at it. I was about to write the next sentence when the buzzing returned, and completely fed up, I turned towards the noise and swung hard, making good contact with the little critter.
It careened off my hand and landed on the demonstration table. Without hesitation, I moved to it and slammed the table as hard as I could. When I pulled my hand away, instead of seeing the guts of a tiny creature, I instead saw a smashed blob with wires and components sticking out of it.
“Hey, Mr. G.,” said one of my students. “Sorry about that. That was actually mine and it got a bit too close.”
“What got a bit too close?” I asked, still breathing heavily.
“The drone.”
“What?” I said. “Why did you bring a drone into my classroom?”
The kid smiled. “Instead of taking notes, I thought I would get my drone to video the lesson. Then, I could watch it later.”
I was speechless for a moment. “I have all kinds of issues with that. First, I am quite sure that it is illegal to record my lesson without my knowledge. Second, there is no way in hell that you will be watching that video later, especially when YouTube and TikTok have so many more that are way more interesting. Stop fooling yourself.”
The kid looked crestfallen. “Yes, Mr. G.”
I felt a bit bad about this, since she was a really good kid. “No worries. No harm done. I am just sad that I destroyed your drone. They cannot be cheap.”
“Actually, no, they are pretty cheap. In fact, I have 5 other drones in the classroom right now, working in sync to get the best possible angles to the lesson.”
“What?” I said incredulously. “Well, call them back in, or however you say it. My classroom is a no fly zone. The only thing that should be flying through the air is my marker when it runs out of ink.”
And with that, I took my fading green pen and threw it across the room and it went straight into the garbage. I was the Jordan of marker basketball. One student gave me a golf clap …. otherwise, nothing.
Sighing, I turned to my third and last whiteboard and proceeded to finish up the lesson. The writing was crisp, the lines were straight, and the diagrams were works of multicoloured art. But I was tired and I did not have the energy to appreciate my accomplishments.
I wrote the homework in the only blank section of the whiteboards, and then I returned to my office chair. I then placed my head down on my desk, wondering how I was going to make it through the school year. I was an analog teacher in a digital world, and I was losing the battle.
As I rested, waiting for the clock to signal the end of the class, the students completely ignored the homework that was assigned. Instead, they brought out their phones and aimed them directly at me. My 30 years of teaching would now be reduced to a meme of a grey haired instructor sleeping in his classroom. #physics from A’s to ZZZZZ
Phil Goldthorpe: Views from the Passenger Seat 