Deal or no deal? School Principal offers students $100 to stay off phones

In an extremely mobile-dependent world, schools have found it increasingly difficult to keep students off of their cell phones. Let’s face it educators, how many times have you had to scold a student for spending too much time on mobile devices in the classroom? I think it’s safe to assume most educators have probably lost count by now. Well, one principal is taking this problem into her own hands by issuing a challenge of her students.

Washington Latin Public Charter School principal, Diana Smith, has challenged her students to spend each Tuesday of their summer break completely devoid of all technology! For students who successfully complete this challenge through the beginning of the school year, in August, she will reward them $100. This challenge includes phones, tablets, televisions, movies, and video games. Luckily for Smith, she has already begun the saving process and has been quoted to have saved $600, as of this writing.

Although, this challenge is not active during the school year, the hope would be to gradually wean students off of technology during the day-to-day activities. Although not a full-proof method, the monitoring of the student's technology use will be done primarily by the parents. "I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the ubiquity of the phones in their lives," Smith said.

If all the students complete the challenge she will be dishing out a cool $16,000 (160 students). However, how many students does she think will achieve this goal? According to Diana, she believes 50 or fewer students will actually complete this challenge. Smith went as far to say, "I have seen kids who can't go an hour without touching a phone." In the end, if this forces the students get outside more and encounter more personal interactions with each other than the goal has been achieved!