One Arizona high school teach is resigning over his students' addictions...to their phones.
The constant use of smartphones in his classroom has driven Sahuaro High School’s Mitchell Rutherford to tell Fox News last week that he is "giving up" being a biology teacher because he can't control phone usage.
"I have been struggling with mental health this year mostly because of what I identified as basically phone addiction with the students," he commented.
After being a teacher for 11 years, he has resigned. He said last week that he has implemented a "variety of lesson plans" to try and make it clear to his students the negative effects of constant phone usage.
"Here's extra credit, let's check your screen time, let's create habits, let's do a unit on sleep and why sleep is important and how to reduce your phone usage for a bedtime routine, and we talked about it every day and created a basket called ‘phone jail,’" he told Fox News.
He likened the phones to other addictions in the area: "Opioids, obviously a huge problem, cocaine, heroin, all of those drugs, alcohol, it's all a big problem, but like sugar even greater than that and then phones even greater than that."
He said that "something shifted" in the kids during the Covid-19 pandemic and that their addictions to their phones got worse.
Recent studies indicate that pandemic-related disruptions have significantly harmed the education and productivity of K-12 students across the country. Rutherford expressed concerns to the media, initially blaming himself for the growing educational gaps. He noted that some students openly disregarded school, but he ultimately believes that societal changes are needed to instill better habits in children.
"As a society, we need to prioritize educating our youth and protecting our youth and allowing their brains and social skills and happiness to develop in a natural way, without their phone," he concluded.
"Part of me feels like I’m abandoning these kids," he said, adding, "I tell kids to do hard things all the time, and now I’m leaving? But I decided I’m going to try something else that doesn’t completely consume me and drain me."