A teacher’s only oasis, the break room. Photo courtesy of Regency Business Solutions.

  Whether this is your freshman year or your senior year, you’re bound to have run into some problems at San Luis Obispo High School. 

Ranging from destruction of property in bathrooms, false fire alarms, etc. SLOHS students have been no stranger to issues.

But have students thought about what the staff might be dealing with?

  Arguably the most common problem that the staff have noticed is phone usage.

“As teachers, some of the biggest problems we face in the classroom are cell phone use, talking, and students not having their materials… Luckily, the cell phone pouches are helping with the problem,” said English teacher Sholeh Prochello.

  In close relation is the idea of students skipping class by going to the restrooms for extended periods of time.

“Other kids go and are gone [for] fifteen to twenty minutes, so we have to email home and find out what is going on.” said geometry teacher Annamarie Fella.

The school has tried implementing several policies to control this, some more effective than others. 

  While restrictions on phones are being pushed by many teachers in the San Luis Coastal Unified School District, there are also downsides that come with these policies. 

“We need to be careful not to degrade teacher-student relationships and make our schools feel more like prisons,” writes neaToday.

  A delicate balance is required when it comes to problems involving students’ property like mobile phones. Though a bill restricting the use of cell phones in California schools was passed on July 1st of 2019, Assembly Bill 272 to be specific, the Covid-19 pandemic seemingly nullified it. 

  The cultural and societal significance of mobile phones are hard to argue against, even if they disrupt the school learning environment as a whole. 

  “When schools shifted to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, policies to limit or ban cellphones became meaningless, as many students relied on their phones for both schoolwork and entertainment,” writes USNews.

  The lack of student respect is a large contributing factor to another problem plaguing the teaching industry; a shortage of teachers themselves.

  Less and less aspiring teachers are going to training or getting degrees, often replaced by long-term substitutes that don’t require either. Most likely a mix of pandemic related burnout and the increasing difficulty of working in a classroom environment.

  “Teachers are leaving the classroom at higher rates, and the pool of candidates is not big enough to replace them,” writes the Washington Post. 

  With this just being a few examples of problems teachers and staff are facing, the question now is what students can do to help reduce them. 

Source: washingtonpost.com, usnews.com