October 3, 2008

From the Dean of Students: 

As Dean of Students I look forward to sharing all that I’m learning about students and wellness; I look forward to these Friday conversations. However, my most recent educational moments have been hard, and these learning moments involve cell phone texting.  

Here’s what I’ve learned in these few weeks. Texting is rarely necessary or appropriate. Texting absorbs a great deal of a student’s time. It can be addictive, and it allows the sender to send words and images he or she never would deliver in person. It forces the recipient to deal with harsh words, inappropriate images, and sexual language on their own or within the gossip circles of their friends. Texting in these moments expands the lies, the hurt feelings, and the rumors. 

How do I know this? Well, in these past weeks I have spoken with students whose phones have sent them demeaning and hurtful messages.  I have learned of two upper school students who have sent either suggestive images or text to younger boys—“Do you think I’m hot?”  I have received calls from parents asking for my advice on how to protect their children from the messages, the time drains and the social pressures texting has brought. I have heard of some parents who have simply taken the phones away.   

Do I think we have bad children? No, I don’t. I think communication technology is moving at light speed, while our own abilities to problem-solve its consequences move much more slowly. In my teen years, technology communication consisted of one, shared family phone; and if you were lucky, that phone came with a long extension cord that reached as far as the front hall closet or the commode in the bathroom. The length of your call was determined by others wanting to use the phone. The inappropriate content of your conversations was only as deep as your bravery about being overheard. 

Today, kids can text each other in absolute privacy and with little-or-no immediate consequence. They can easily include others in their verbal forays to hurt, shock, or insult others.  

So from these past few weeks, I come to you with two requests—one for all parents and guardians and one specifically for parents of seventh and eighth graders—though others are invited. I make these requests sincerely and from the depth of my concern for our children’s healthy development. 

First, to all parents: Tonight or sometime this weekend, take your child’s or children’s phones and read the text messages they have sent and received. Some of you already do this; I suspect the supervision practice drops off for those parents of older children. But, as I noted earlier, I know of two older students who have sent inappropriate messages.    

I encourage you not to see this investigation as an invasion of your child’s privacy. You have purchased the phone; you pay the monthly charges. These messages have already entered the non-private domain; you simply are reading them. Parents monitor other aspects of their children’s entertainment—movies, TV shows, videos, and sometimes music. Texting is simply another form of entertainment. 

If you find that your child has sent or received rude, vulgar, sexual, aggressive, or disrespectful messages—ones they would not want you to see or hear—then ask them about these messages. You may learn your child is being sexually harassed or bullied and has not known what to do. You may find your child is bullying or harassing another. It will be hard to learn your child has been suffering at the hands of others; it will be hard to learn your child has generated this suffering. But no matter on which side you find your child, remember that you find him or her in a learning moment, and from this moment better things will come for the recipient and the sender.  

If you find nothing that concerns you, then please thank your children. Tell them how proud you are of the way they are handling private responsibility. If your child felt offended by your reading the phone, you can blame it on me. Tell him or her I have been concerned about some students and that I wanted to be sure that all were emotionally safe or behaving responsibly. 

To seventh- and eighth-grade parents—and others are welcome: On Sunday, Oct. 12, at 4:30 p.m., following our Open House, I would like to have parents and their children come to a cell-phone discussion in the Commons. I am taking a parent’s sound suggestion that our children need to know that other parents read their messages, that all adults are concerned about these messages, and that parents are committed to changing things. 

In conclusion, I want to state something you all know. Seabury is a place that asks our students to give us their best—academically, ethically, and socially. In my own classes, I intentionally set a high bar; I set that bar high because I know my students will eventually reach it and I know the depth of my own commitment to helping them succeed. I stand with colleagues who could say the same thing. 

I deeply believe that our school community will succeed in its academic, ethical and social goals for our students only with the cooperation of our families, for school alone will not raise bright, healthy children. We are jointly raising these children, and it is from that vision that I have make my requests of you. 

I know that as parents, you have the ultimate responsibility for your children and their welfare, and I respect that you have the final say in how they will behave and how you will enforce your family’s values, rules, and expectations. I ask that you set that bar high, knowing that with all our support, these young people will succeed in becoming the bright, moral, socially aware people we wish them to be.   

Warm regards,

Judith Galas