Inside a Middle School's Fight Against Smartphone-Fueled Cruelty and Bullying (encore)

Principal Zach

And so my first day at middle school here, there was a female altercation. Three girls jumped, one girl, phones were out, and it was just like, what are we doing?

Delaney Rustin

Hello, I'm Delaney Rustin, primary care physician creator with Lisa Tabb of the four Screenagers movies. And this is the Screenagers podcast, a show about discovering the best ways to help our youth and ourselves navigate our rapidly changing digital world. Today we're talking about the issue of when students use their cell phones in school in ways that cause hurt feelings, promote fights, and relate to bullying. Things such as posting cruel images of classmates on social media, filming and spreading embarrassing moments or fights, or using group chats to ostracize someone. Smartphones have introduced a whole new array of ways that cruelty happens in schools, and school administrators are struggling to deal with this. Acts of cruelty exist on a spectrum ranging from small gestures to more significant ones. Yet even the smaller actions are worth reflecting on. Take, for example, this ninth grade student you're about to hear from, Mary, and how she experienced posts that were being made about her while she was on a field trip in Washington, D.C. this

Mary

was last year, and I have a twin brother and we're pretty close. Like, we hang out and talk to each other and we were at one of the Washington, D.C. memorials, walking together, like, shoulder to shoulder, I guess, like brother and sister would. And this boy in my grade took a picture of it, like, put like, heart around it and said, like, siblings or dating or something. He said, like, they're siblings, but they like, do they date? And he posted it on his story for Instagram.

Interviewer

How did you feel about that?

Mary

I thought it was weird, first of all, because, like, he knew we were siblings. It's not like he was trying to guess. He knew we were siblings and that's just weird. It was also just like, rude because I don't have social media and so if my friends wouldn't have shown it to me, I just wouldn't have known. And so that's like, behind my back. So that wasn't cool.

Delaney Rustin

This is a version of something called ship or dip. Ship, like in relationship and dip, which is slang and basically means disapprove. A student will take a picture of another student, usually without their consent, and pair it with a photo of someone else and place it in a chat or social media, asking who ship or dip. And then people in the chat will weigh in about whether or not they should be romantically involved. Usually the intention is to set students up for ridicule. Here's another example of teasing Via phones. Again from the 14 year old Mary.

Mary

People would get their phone out and sneakily take a picture of people's like feet and like shoes and like feed at sporting events during class and under the stall in the bathroom and post it without these people knowing on an account. A lot of people were interested in it. And I think it also made a lot of people mad because like no one wants their feet on Instagram. So the school got involved and shut it down.

Interviewer

Did the students who had their feet on theirs kind of feel made to feel bad A little bit?

Mary

Yes. Like making fun of people.

Delaney Rustin

Over the past few years, schools have begun taking action through away for the day policies, meaning phones and smartwatches are put away for the day during school. And not surprisingly, when schools do this, rates of phone related cruelty goes down. To learn more about the positive difference these policies make, I sat down with Principal Zach, who oversees a public middle school in Washington state. Zach took over as principal three years ago, and at that time students were allowed to use phones during breaks and lunch. This past September, Zach led his school to become an away for the day campus. And now phones are away for the whole day. In this case by having phones and smartwatches put in pouches that students keep in their backpacks. The pouches are called yonder pouches. It's not a perfect solution, but it's definitely working to significantly decrease phone and smartphone use during the school day. I visited Zach at his middle school a few weeks ago during lunchtime to see the new policy in action and to talk with Zach. Students were outside playing on the playground, eating and talking with each other and teachers and other staff around the cafeteria. Zach and I recorded our conversation in his office. We talked about the significant decline in phone related cruelty and what the school does when cruelty does happen. One important note before we get started, the school mascot is a raven and the school community and the students are referred to as ravens. This point will come up in our talk. Let's begin with a story Zach remembers about lunchtime.

Principal Zach

Yeah, no, there's multiple things. Like at lunch there was things where certain kids would take unflattering pictures of other, you know, girls or boys eating lunches and then post it on an Instagram page. And people would comment and there'd be just things that they thought were funny and it was actually mean. So kids were not eating at lunch or in the classrooms. You wonder why people are not raising their hands. There would be a group project and kids didn't purposely would try to fail the project because they didn't want to get in front to have material to present because then someone would take a picture of them and put it on a ship page and a ship or dip. And so it'd be resms. Ship or dip. And so someone would sneak out their phone and take a picture. Next thing you know, the kids coming to school crying the next day because there's 30 comments on a picture of them doing a class presentation.

Interviewer

Okay, well, let's back up a little bit. What's chip and dip?

Principal Zach

Exactly. It's crazy. So, like, kids would just be walking. Other kids would take photos of them, likely in flattery, different gendered. Same gendered. And then they'd post it on a ship or dip and say, should these two be in a relationship or should they dip? So people would vote on if they would be a couple or not. And it was often not flattering. It was just negative and mean.

Delaney Rustin

What about fights?

Principal Zach

I can't even tell you how challenging this was. There were so many bathroom instances where kids would go to the bathroom, pull out a phone, and then either play fight and actually fight fight. That turns into a fight or not. The other thing is, we saw after school, if a phone came out and five phones come out and you hear aloud, we would run over there because it'd be across the street on the corner or by the buses or over here. And it was just like everyone had their phones out. So we actually started to not just respond to the behavior and discipline the kids. That had consequences for those that were actually having the altercation. But we had to start doing concentric circle. Anyone that was associated because that's a promotion of fighting. And families were trying to defend kids pulling out their phones. So we really had to do front yard conversations, restorative approaches, and understand the impact of pulling out a phone is actually adding fuel to a fire. And you can't everybody tries to defend that until it's their kid that's on social media. And I think that empathy part and understanding, like, maybe you're not happy that we're having a conversation about your kid's thing. Well, it's off school.

Mary

It's this.

Principal Zach

I'm like, yeah, but take all that out of here. This is your baby. This is someone else's baby that's on the Internet. You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube to understand the impact and work to restore and like shift the culture. And so my first day at middle school here, there was a female altercation. Three girls jumped, one girl. Phones were out and it was just like, what are we doing?

Interviewer

Say a little bit more. So people. You saw that people were filming it?

Principal Zach

Yeah, it was. And then all of a sudden, like people screen capture and share and share and share and snap and share. Or somebody dares someone in person to text the N word in a group chat. And it's a white kid and it's. And it could even be a person of color that's daring him having fun. And they do that and then they screen capture and they share it over here. And all of a sudden it's this big race thing.

Interviewer

When you said about the bathroom, sometimes would they play fight? But was the idea then to film it, to make it look like it was real and just to see if they could then spread it, have something to spread on social media, all the above.

Principal Zach

I mean, there were so many different variables that come in here. Some kids are upset and go run a fade in the bathroom or just go fight and do this.

Interviewer

Or what's run a fade.

Principal Zach

Like calling people out to fight. Just kid terminology is what they would say. But it was just. To me, it was. I think it was their way of connecting. And this is what I'm saying around the connections, like, there's just ways to like connect, feel relevant, feel heard, feel a sense of belonging. And we're trying to just get to that function of the behavior and respond as a school, like create authentic ways in person, in real life and the vulnerability to say, I don't feel connected and how do I. We're trying to shift what we're doing based on the cell phone policy. That was just crazy.

Interviewer

Ultimately, you've changed to be fully where the phones are away for the whole day, as well as smartwatches. So as well as doing all sorts of pro connection and pro positivity. Getting back to a moment about the. What you were getting lots of referrals into your office related to aggression and mean bullying and all sorts of stuff.

Principal Zach

Yeah, we just had lunch. You're sitting in my office talking. I have time and capacity to do this. There's not one conflict that happened, I can tell you. 4th, 5th and 6th period was all about the drama, the responses of phones during the lunches. I would not have had this time and capacity last year or the year before because we would be dealing with something with phones.

Interviewer

What kind of things?

Principal Zach

Well, let's just go there. Like, I have my phone here, my work one, and I'm going to show you just some photos and things that were things that kids did because I just would capture in my work phone. But it. There was things. I mean, how about this?

Interviewer

Two kids that are fighting and someone took a video of it.

Principal Zach

Yeah. And it's. And that's in the corner of a class while a teacher is doing a group in the other corner. It's all for the show. It's either for clicks, it's for likes, it's to feel relevant. Here's what's one of the things that happened. There was a student that was an outlier for behaviors. Like, the kid was just not invisible, but just does school. All of a sudden, we couldn't find out who was doing the ship or dip pages because they're anonymous. This is the Snapchat thing. You can have a tag, you can have a page, you can do whatever, and no one knows who owns it. I feel like that's not okay. Like, if there's something that's inappropriate, that's exploiting kids, there should be some accountability to the page owner. You could respond to the company and say, this is the person. And then there's some type of consequence to get it turned down, but it's not the case. So there's kids that had basically created this page, and no one knows who the page is, but it says, message me if you want to get your content. There was a girl that had been bullied that messaged content to them of bullying someone else. And now she feels relevant because her content's up on this page, and it feels good in those moments, those false little dopamine hits, and it's mean. And so we found out because we were able to kind of like, look at the cameras. Look at the time I'm spending my admin time when I should be in classrooms supporting kids and teachers. I'm looking at the cameras, I'm looking at the angle of this photo. That kid had the same closed. Now they're in fifth period. Let me go talk to them, interview them. Then the parent says, yeah, you can. They can show you their phone. And they phone. There's information that has all these main things that are messaged, and we coach them about their impact. We restorative circle. This is all just one kid in one instance of 750 kids in this building. It's like it's stopping and it's building empathy in this kid, understand their impact and restoring and trying to get this nasty stuff off the Internet because it's kids faces. These are parents, babies.

Interviewer

Can you give an example of a student who's come in kind of feeling the pain of having something like this happen.

Principal Zach

It breaks my heart. A couple different faces that pop in my mind of kids that have just been like, I think about when they're my age and they look back and they're like, man, middle school is hard. We had kids that wanted to transfer schools. They literally are like, they don't want to be here when you're in high school or in your college and life and beyond. Everyone says middle school is one of the hardest times we have. If we know that going into it, if we know that middle school is the hardest going into it. Does it have to be we? What can we do together to lighten the load? So it's not the hardest part. And so that's where the community building piece is coming in. And so that is the philosophy that we're trying to coach ahead of time. We go to feeder schools, fifth grade, and we talk about the Raven experience in life. So we plant seeds and then they come up here and we cultivate the plant, right? So when you have people, kids that have been just so disrupted by this online bullying and text messages and group chats and you know, that negatively impacts the Raven experience, which no one has the right. We have a school board policy. There's posters everywhere that says, you have the right to a safe, inclusive, nurturing school environment. You have the right. If you don't take care of your rights over there, your rights can get revoked or somebody can steal your stuff, or you can be a reservist. You have to know your rights so you can take ownership. Right?

Interviewer

You have the right to not be treated cruelly.

Principal Zach

Yes, absolutely. Like, you have to know your rights. I'm not the bad guy for holding you accountable. It's not the bad guy for reporting that this is inappropriate. Don't tear down the culture that you want to be experiencing. Right. We created actually this sore report where. ROBERT EAGLE staff, RAVENS we soar together. We're safe physically and emotionally. We take ownership, we achieve and we're resilient, right? There's all these core values that we try to weave into so we can truly soar. So the Soar report is posters, and you see them around and there's basically the student rights are on there. I have the right to safe, inclusive, high quality instruction, restoration. I have the right. All these rights. That is part of our school board policy. If those rights are infringed upon, the goal is that you're coming and talking to an adult, and if you're not comfortable enough, you can anonymously report. And then we are able to intervene on the reporting system it says my name, optional my grade. What's the incident? Is this harassment? Is you want to report? There's also positive praise. Some kids like hey we need a field trip. It's been too long, the energy is low. We need to do this. So kids kind of take ownership of their building. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And so they reported some things as far as kids threatening to self harm on social media. I'm going to shoot up the school tomorrow. I have gotten a Soar report at 7:30 at night and me and my assistant principal went to a kid's house at 8pm notified the authorities and went there because there was threatening to this and it was to get shock factor to do these things. But what happened was screen captured on people's Instagram. It just blew everything up. Right. But we showed up to support and nurture and care for the kid. Right. But kids were able to see that we're responding and are reporting things at the time. And it was all on phones and stuff like this. There's a lot of bullying stuff that was going on. They didn't want to be this snitch and tattle. So shift into culture around like tattling or snitching is like how do we just report so we can uphold our community because we want to be safe here.

Interviewer

So when the kids are feeling bad because something got posted around them, video or something else or the fight that then they feel bad, they're in a fight but then it's been going around, they come into you, they come here. What is the restorative practice part of it look like?

Principal Zach

So at first we do the investigation, we got all the angles who has this, who shared and my goodness then you're talking to the 17 people that shared it at school and then it's just gone. It's too far. And so we're like okay, we tried to get parent. We tried notify parents to delete.

Interviewer

Do you notify parents to delete things,

Principal Zach

have a conversation with their kids and through their phones and hopefully delete things that are other kids that are shouldn't have. Just talk to your kids about these things. Your tech Tuesdays, I send those in my newsletters. First part is not while it's escalated and heated. We give either a sleeping audit at night or whatever. But we get to the root. It takes so much time to get to the root of the behavior. And we understand on the wall right here there's a cylinder that has two shadows. One angle of the shadow shows a circle One angle of a shadow shows a square and the actual item is a cylinder. So we have that up there because there's always multiple perspectives. Your experience in your story may be your truth and this is their truth and both can exist. Right. Just look at that right there. And so what we're going to do is understand your. When we share this, you're going to argue that didn't happen, that didn't happen, but look at the shadow. That didn't happen.

Mary

Right.

Principal Zach

So you're going to say your piece, they say their piece and then I build empathy. Do you understand? Based on what they're sharing and their experience, could you understand how that would feel? What are your thoughts on. And the kids are like, well, I could see that that's not how I did. And it's okay, perfect. Do you have any questions about what they said? Okay, yeah. So then they share and when they share, they're saying this and we get to the root of hurt feeling is what, number one, misunderstanding is. Number two, hurt feeling. I don't know how to deal with my, my, my feelings, my anger. So I lashed out this way, Knee jerk reaction, my lid was flipped and these other things. Right. And so then we get to the root and we say, do you see this comes from hurt. At least have you ever been hurt? You understand how that feels? It's probably not the best approach. What are three other ways we could have done that? I could have done this. So it's like, do you see how this person is? And so then we build empathy and understanding. We find a common ground and we build from that common ground. Say, what do you need to move forward? Because it sounds like this is a misunderstanding. It sounds like feelings are hurt. I've had my feelings hurt, so I fully understand how that is. It's not the best approach of this. That actually added fuel to the fire. You actually walked around with a tug of war rope and you were just waiting for them to grab it and they grabbed it and the tug of war started. And so then a lot of times it's either complex trauma, the kid has something else going on and you're the straw that broke scoundrel's back. So you're pissed off.

Interviewer

But would you be saying that there.

Principal Zach

Absolutely. All of these things? I am.

Interviewer

You're saying there's lots of stuff, hard stuff in our lives.

Principal Zach

Absolutely.

Interviewer

That are impacting that you'd say to

Principal Zach

those kids, yeah, this is the catalyst. I even joke around. I was like, not joke around.

Interviewer

I'm very clear.

Principal Zach

But I'm like, listen, here's the deal. I'll draw on the whiteboard, I'll pull things out. I'm like, picture this with me, right? You got a truck, a boat. Boat's going down the road. You got a chain that's linking. It just unlinks, and it's just sparking on the road. It's fine by itself. It's still got two other safety things. But then it's California. There's hay on the side. The hay is a beautiful day. It's waiting for it to rain, to get green, but it's not. Hasn't rained in a while. All of a sudden, that little spark kicks over, hits that little hay. California wildfire. Hear the boat, hear the chain. You're the navigating these things. We have a wildfire. What's the catalyst? Where's the spark? What happened? And then they're able to kind of like, okay, this is what sparked it. Right. So getting them to understand. And so when you're able to kind of isolate through the restorative approach, we can get to that part and see how it hurt. And we have such trust in our community. My counselors run restorative circles. I run restorative circles.

Interviewer

When you say circles, is it in that situation, would it be just two people?

Principal Zach

Yep. And sometimes it's peer groups. So we'll. And like we just did a restorative circle two days ago. We'll go sit on the stoop. We call it Brooklyn Stoop. Over here in the back gate, we'll walk the track. And so these are all spaces that we'll have restorative approaches in, because it takes the power out. I take my principal hat off. I just call myself a human trying to navigate conflict. Because no matter what, there's. Conflict's going to be great and small. It's just like, how do we navigate? As long as humans exist, we have conflict. The question is, do we throw fire on it, or do we take some oxygen and air out and try to restore what we can? And so this is how we kind of talk to kids in this building,

Interviewer

the bystanders who ended up filming something. How often are they in a restorative circle, too?

Principal Zach

All part of it. And you also can't push people to restore. There's been times where we just set the tone to peacefully coexist. A lot of times there's a friendship or something, but this is just conflict. In your story, can we agree to just peacefully coexist? And they can agree, and they're like, we're good. Right.

Interviewer

And for the behavior to stop. The goal of this behavior.

Principal Zach

That's it.

Interviewer

You know, to stop. Uhhuh.

Principal Zach

And then the bystanders, we sometimes will pull them aside and have conversations. Sometimes they're a part of it. But sometimes the numbers are off and we don't want to have it be like four kids over here and one over here. That's just not like four kids on one group. And this kid is the pro. And we.

Interviewer

Yes.

Principal Zach

Balancing it, like, okay, get to the root of it. And then we coach and restore the outside circle people. But this is just with us two people or three, four here. So. And we've had large peer group restorations, big circles, almost classroom sizes because we had that much conflict with group chats.

Interviewer

And I think people are keep thinking in their brains of, oh well, my kids middle school, they don't have social media. It's like group chat is a form of social media in part because you don't think the media. But actually they share a lot of stuff on those.

Principal Zach

That's false. Ready for this? Your kids do have social media.

Mary

Yes.

Principal Zach

On their friends phones. Absolutely. If I'll pull a kid right now, I'm willing to bet money you hit the top little triangle under their Instagram or the top little triangle on their Snapchats. And there's four profiles. There was a big conflict and I was messaging parents and they're like, my kid doesn't have it. I was like, no, your kid does have it. And they're on their friend stuff. And now the kids are showing other kids how to have applications that hide their Snapchats. So a calculator that looks like a Snapchat. And so just letting parents know that just be their middle schools. They're find any lane. They're good kids that just are navigating this world in a different way. And we have to not give them freedoms and be cool, but like it's damaging. So you may think that your kid doesn't have it, but they may have it on their friends phones. And that's just what it is. So it's about critically thinking and understanding your impact and a lot of social emotional intelligence, teaching to understand what that is to avoid some conflict.

Interviewer

And there's a lot of aggression and hardship around the group chat. So to me, it's like a social media because people also don't realize it's bullying too. Yeah.

Principal Zach

Who's getting kicked in? Who's getting pulled into a group chat? Who's getting kicked out of a group chat.

Interviewer

Exactly. And what are you saying about each other on the group chat where you

Principal Zach

have to never say they're face to face.

Interviewer

Exactly. And you have to pretend like you're cool, that they just put you down this way and it's just happening there on that level. And you feel powerless because you can't really bring it up to an adult because then they know that people are on it at school and all sorts of complex issues like that. And you're gonna look like the tattletale.

Principal Zach

There's no winning. Yeah. And so this is where I mean, even the reporting part is. Some people screen caption share it in the reporting SOAR report, and we'll just pull kids and have conversations. No one's trying to get people in trouble. They're trying to figure out conflict.

Interviewer

And they do that anonymously. But then they can also. You could also try to reach them if it's anonymous.

Principal Zach

They put their name if they want to get connected. And the other thing we say is adults don't always get it right as a kid. How do you recommend we move forward with this so they get their input? But the cool thing about the Soar report, based on some of the tech stuff, is, like, the kids are no longer just going and soar reporting. They're coming directly to an adult. Like, you saw a couple kids, this kid and that kid at lunch. Just come up and connect with me. Hey, this is happening. I was like, oh, I'll connect after that.

Interviewer

What were they connecting about?

Principal Zach

There was a science lesson.

Interviewer

Flash and Flash for people to know

Principal Zach

stands for family life and sexual health. It's science, sex education.

Interviewer

Yeah.

Principal Zach

So there's. Of course you're talking about contraceptives and all this other stuff in class. And there's hot dogs for lunch today. We just gotta line our food schedule with our science guys.

Interviewer

The students said something to you about that?

Principal Zach

Well, there's kids that were joking and made me feel uncomfortable, and they said, hey, can you have a conversation? I was like, yes. It's not okay. Absolutely not okay.

Interviewer

The girls came to you and said,

Principal Zach

yeah, it was great.

Interviewer

That's wonderful.

Principal Zach

It's like, let's not have hot dogs on the flashlight unit days.

Delaney Rustin

That was Principal Zach. A huge thank you to Zach for speaking with us today, as well as Mary, the student you heard from at the top of the piece. If you or someone you know is looking for further resources for getting phones and smartwatches out of schools, Visit our campaign awayfortheday.org and for information about online cruelty, be sure to check out the show notes for this episode@screennagersmovie.com Also, if you liked this podcast episode, be sure to check out our recent episode titled How One School's Bold Move to Lock Away Transformed Learning, as well as one called How Smartwatches Are Subverting School no Phone Policies. What a gift. You chose to tune into the show today. The Screenagers movement is all about doing this work together. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast to get each episode automatically and the more subscribers, the easier it is for others to find us. And if you give it some stars, that helps even more. Check out screenagersmovie.com to get resources for each episode to learn about our four Screenagers movies and to find my weekly parenting blog called Techtalk Tuesdays. Curious about a specific topic? Use the search bar to get answers from my many blogs and podcast episodes. Finally, I love hearing from you, so email me@delaneysreenagersmovie.com what ideas do you have for future episodes? Today's show was produced by the following people me, your host Delaney Reston, Lisa Tabb, Rebecca Tolan and Robbie Carver. Robbie also does our sound engineering.