Use your laptop if you must use a computer or the internet during the meetings, but you'd be better served by an independent (and dumb) tape recorder.
Off topic...I recently ran into my high school chemistry teacher at Costco this weekend and he said he lost his passion to teach because school do not enforce their "no phone" policy due to litigious parents. He said the students are constantly distracted by their smart phones. On the drive home I was thinking...why can't schools encourage students to carry dumb/flip phones for emergencies?!
That seems counter-productive.
I have family members that are teachers - and this is one of the reasons why some of the most experienced, highly skilled teachers are leaving to teach at private schools. It's not a good thing, because these private schools' tuition fees ($16,000 per year or more) mean that the children of the top 5% of wage earners in a city are getting a better quality education than the public school children. And this is in a location where the public schools are generally of good quality.
Just like any job, teachers who have reached their personal threshold of bullshit-tolerance will leave and go find a job elsewhere.
I grew up in a very wealthy school district and we had a big private school in the suburb as well. The local cops were leery of disciplining kids, let alone the teachers.
Probably has something to do with the fact that if you are willing to pay that much for something, then it must be worth it.
I attended a private high school like that, and one of my parents worked at a similar high school. The other worked in inner city schools in the NYC DOE. They encountered very different types of parents throughout their careers, yes, but I'd describe the difference as being more of a continuum of helicopter parenting, not litigiousness.
The two private schools I have some experience with (the one I attended and the one my father taught at) had no problem disciplining - and even expelling - rich kids. The only time conspicuous leniency was granted for serious offenses was when the kid was 1) a first time offender, and 2) the child of a large donor or member of the school board.
Sure, the occasional lawsuit comes up (more often than not it's just a threat of a lawsuit). But the schools I'm thinking of charges $20k annual tuition to most students; scholarships reducing that tuition are both competitive and limited. They also have a large, consistent stream of donations. They can weather the storm on most such lawsuits and have counsel on retainer for that kind of thing.
A public school, OTOH, won’t be able to block a child’s admission on the basis of their parents’ litigiousness.
Value of these schools depend on how well they manage this.
If there was an urgent matter, your parents could contact or have someone contact the school itself.
How is it so difficult?
I hadn't imagined it any other way until other relatives said their kids were actually using their phones in class. It seems utterly insane to me - how is it even possible to teach a class like that?
Schools have always had rules, so it seems like a no-brainer to enforce this one, and if parents complain, ask them to take their kids elsewhere.
I too think it's a no-brainer to enforce a no phone in the classroom situation.
Just our experience. She caters her French class to their interests. Makes paper handout exercises involving “tagging” vocabulary in photos and stuff like that. I think young people are just really into their phones and teachers need to relate instead of treating it like the enemy. She goes on her phone after the bell as well...
Maybe her job is better than those of American public school teachers as far as pay, class size and so on. Maybe cellphones are breaking the camels back down south in a way they don’t here? I could see that being the case and speaks to bigger problems
Does anyone know if portable, packable, and sufficiently effective, Faraday cages exist. Effective enough to block all incoming/outgoing signal?
In that case they could deposit their phone in the pack at a random location heading to the meet-up, then remove it at another random location later [without having to leave it behind].
Wrapping the phone in aluminum foil will do the trick. But really simply turning off the phone (which you would want to do anyway to kill the mic) should be enough except perhaps if you're up against a state-level adversary.
Reminded of that NYT piece (2015) from a reporter who went searching for the IRA (Internet Research Agency) in Russia.
(Brilliant read, and unnerving: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html)
It's easy to stray into leaving your phone on too long or forgetting one of the times. Leaving it at home is much harder of a boundary to cross without knowing.