In the spring of 2007, while I was counting down the weeks until the birth of my oldest child, millions of other people were counting down the weeks until they could get their hands on this new thing called an iPhone.

I’d had a Blackberry when I was employed full-time, but when I left that job, had a baby, and switched to freelance work, I wasn’t convinced the juice was worth the financial squeeze. My flip phone and I stayed together for seven more years.

But in 2014 I relented, and right away, I was hooked. Check my email from anywhere? Text with babysitters twice as fast? Take pictures, edit them, and post on social media? What took me so long?

Still, I was acutely conscious of my device habits: I was pretty careful about my kids’ screen time and I wanted to be sure I was modeling moderation. I remember keeping my phone out of reach during certain periods of the day, and intentionally stating why I was using my phone if I had to interrupt my time with them: “I need to look up directions to the restaurant where we’re meeting Grandma and Grandpa,” or “I need to check for one email about a work deadline.”

Ten years on in 2024, things are different. When my kids stagger out of their rooms in the morning, I’m likely to be on my phone trying to finish the NYT Spelling Bee game or reading the news on the NPR app. When I cook I’m listening to Apple Music and following a recipe on my phone. Family conversations and outings are punctuated by pulling out phones to fact-check each other, pull up trivia, or sink periodically into our own texts, games, videos, and other diversions. It’s not uncommon for all four of us to be in a room together, each on their own device, in companionable silence.

I find this unsettling. Is it different from when I grew up and we’d all be at home, but each doing our own thing? When I’m on my phone, do I seem less accessible to other people than if I were reading a magazine or writing in a notebook or watching TV on a TV set?

Research conducted last year suggests that on average, American adults spend four and a half hours each day on their phones, up from three hours just a year before. We check our phones an average of 144 times each day, and 75% of us check our phones within five minutes of receiving a notification. A third of all US adults report that they go online “almost constantly,” up 10% from 2015.

This is the context for “Away for the Day” phone policies that school districts are implementing. APS will introduce an “Away for the Day” policy for students in all of its schools starting in August.  (Previously, some administrators and staff members had established an “Away for the Day” rule in certain schools and classrooms, but it was not standard practice.)

Teachers are tired of competing with phones for their students’ attention: Mitchell Rutherford, a veteran Arizona science teacher, recently made headlines when he left the profession, citing frustration with smartphones in school. He said, “It’s kind of like the frog in the boiling water. I guess it’s always been increasing as an issue. And then finally, I was like: Oh, we’re boiling now.” During the last school board meeting here in Arlington, one teacher gave public comment that phones have become “a black hole for brain power in every classroom.”

It's hard to argue with the idea that phones can be a seductive distraction: after all, haven’t they seduced most of us at this point?

In an ideal world, we’d teach students how to exercise good judgment about when and why they’re on their phones. We’d acknowledge that digital platforms can provide important information and social support for individuals who may be marginalized in their physical communities. An outright ban in schools wouldn’t be the answer: rather, we’d help students self-regulate and reflect on their relationship with digital devices and content.

The arguments against this approach include the “David and Goliath” concern that immensely powerful companies have created platforms and algorithms that are purposely addictive and undermine our volition. It’s also been noted that the executive functioning skills necessary for effective self-regulation aren’t fully developed in the adolescent brain.

I have a third concern: Who is going to teach and model this sound judgment and self-regulation? What will we do about the cognitive dissonance that comes up when young people hear us talk about their phone dependency while remaining oblivious to our own?

This is a school problem and a social problem. (If you agree that our relationships with our phones are becoming problematic, which I think is a fair assessment.) I’m intrigued by communities that are taking a holistic view of the issue and designing comprehensive solutions. In New York City, for example, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene considers unregulated social media to be a “digital toxin” and states: “We take a classic public health approach that emphasizes regulations to minimize the production of the toxin, guidance to the public to reduce exposure, and support to individuals to build skills that buffer the toxin’s effects.”  
 
The City’s public health response to social media (which is a piece of, but not equivalent to, problematic phone use) includes encouraging families to delay the initiation of smartphone use until children are at least 14 years old and set shared norms of reducing screen time, especially near bedtime; establishing tech-free zones in schools and other community facilities; and creating community programs that avoid smartphone use during certain times or in certain places to promote social connection.
 
I’m interested in this example and curious how other communities are promoting  wellbeing, which surely must include encouraging healthy media and technology habits for people of all ages.
 
In 2007, Steve Jobs said of the iPhone, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” Putting it Away for the Day feels to me like a necessary though vexingly limited response to a phenomenon that is profoundly altering how we think, behave, and build community.
 ​

The last time I wrote, it was about how AI will change education (and in fact, when I powered up my computer today, at the top of my inbox was this Education Week article: “AI could save school districts time and money—if they use it correctly").

AI uses algorithms to make decisions, and those algorithms operate by prioritizing certain factors over others. For example, internet advertising companies use an algorithm that prioritizes ads that are topically-related to your most recent browser searches (remember how spooky it felt when this first started happening?). It could just as easily prioritize ads for purple products, or ads related to food if you happen to log on at lunchtime.

Humans use algorithms when we make decisions, too, and that’s what I want to write about today.

Let’s say you’re the owner of a toy store and you want to open a second location. But where? There are lots of factors you’ll weigh, including your budget; how much space you think you’ll need; where your competitors are located; proximity to other businesses that would attract toy-buyers; your employees’ transportation needs; and more. Depending on which of these factors you prioritize in your own algorithm, you’ll likely arrive at different conclusions.

Then there’s the question of how you decide what factors to prioritize. If I’m the sole owner of the business, I could safely argue that I get to create the algorithm all by myself. Proximity to other businesses that would attract toy-buyers is top of mind for me, followed by the cost; if it’s a little smaller than I would like, or it’s a few minutes’ walk from the nearest bus stop, I can live with that.

​Now let’s say I am a public school district and I want to open some magnet schools in order to create more diverse school communities. (Set aside for the moment the question of whether there’s robust evidence that magnet schools are an effective way to desegregate.) Now I have to figure out what type(s) of magnet programs to offer. Some of the factors I could prioritize include:

Any one of these factors would be a perfectly reasonable thing to prioritize in my algorithm—but they’ll yield different results.

In my magnet school example, who gets to decide what factors to prioritize in the algorithm? It’s not as simple as in the toy store example. Who is the “owner” of the business? Who is the “owner” of the decision about how to build the algorithm? Because it’s a public system, what special obligations does that create, if any, for community input?

District leadership, educators, school board members, parents, students, and community members all likely have ideas about what factors should be prioritized, and those ideas may not line up.

We talk a lot about “data-driven decision making” but I’m realizing that this may miss the mark. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me over time that our quarrel in decision making may not be with the data but rather with the algorithms the data are fed into.

​Sometimes if we have inaccurate or missing information we may have a data problem, but more often I think the friction is around:

This has been on my mind a lot this summer as APS staff, the community, the school board and its advisory councils weigh important, upcoming decisions about our facilities. It’s central to other aspects of our school system, too—for example, the school board’s annual budget direction is basically an instrument designed to prioritize factors.

​Maybe these insights have been obvious to everyone else and I’m late to the party (it wouldn’t be the first time). But it feels like this will be useful for me in my job moving forward—and perhaps it will be useful to you, too, particularly as we work to engage each other in constructive and trust-building ways.

If you’ve read about teen (and child) mental health these days, I’m betting the headline contained the word “crisis” or the phrase “the kids are not all right” (Google it and see).

I once thought in these terms, until I stopped to consider what message it sends to the young people we’re concerned about.

When we say things like this, we’re branding a whole generation as broken. (This is my issue with the term “learning loss,” too).

By age 40, about 50% of us will have or have had a mental health issue. I’ve had them, and it never once helped me to feel like I was branded, broken, or exceptional. It helped me to know: Lots of other people feel this way sometime in their lives. You are still you, with all the qualities and talents that make you wonderful. This won’t last forever. There are ways to get help. Matthew Biel, Chief of Adolescent and Child Psychiatry at Georgetown Hospital, says, “Talk about it as part of the human condition, in every place humans spend time.”

It’s true that by many measures, there are more young people reporting mental health issues today than in years past. The pandemic undoubtedly took its toll on mental health, but there were signs of something going on even before 2020. There’s been a lot of research and discussion about the effects of social media; changes in diet, sleep and exercise; and the advent of new drugs that are more addictive than ever before.

While we untangle the answers to the “What’s going on?” question, in parallel we need to make good on the assurance “This won’t last forever. There are ways to get help.”

Part of the “crisis” is our ability to respond to those who need help. In Arlington, as in other communities, supply of treatment isn’t keeping up with demand. We don’t have enough clinicians who work with children and teens, and families are on waiting lists for public and private providers. There aren’t enough inpatient beds in public and private hospitals and treatment centers for young people who are truly in crisis.

It’s easy to feel paralyzed by problems that are hard to solve. As a nation (world?) we’ve never invested in mental health the way we should. I can’t wave a wand to conjure a new army of mental health providers. But there are smaller, more local steps we can take.

​I’ve been doing a lot of listening, reading and studying to understand what’s already in place in our community and what more might be possible. I compiled what I learned here, including twelve steps I think we could consider for Arlington. I’ll share a few of them below.

In Arlington, 14% of students in grades 4-5 and 23% in grades 6-12 feel not at all connected or only slightly connected to other students at school. 1 in 3 of our students in grades 4-12 say they do not have a trusted adult outside of school they can talk to when they need help.

Some of the steps we could take to create more connection and belonging—an incredible protective factor for mental health—could include:

• Creating smaller communities (school size, class size) and intentional relationship mapping: ensuring that every student has a trusted adult mentor within the school. Some schools will map peer relationships, too, and offer social skills groups or other ways to help students feel more included.
• Community mentors: I love this article by teacher Renee Moore describing how mentoring worked at her school in Mississippi. And with a nod to Arlington Public Library’s Human Library Event tomorrow—what if we could create a human library of local citizens who are willing to share their talents and experiences with young people and their families?
• Parent-to-parent mentors: In DC, the Early Childhood Intervention Network is training parents to become Family Leads and help other parents and caregivers with similar lived experiences. Family Leads go through a nine-month training and two-month apprenticeship. 100% of applicants have completed the training program, 100% are people of color, and Family Leads gain income and marketable skills by participating.
• Teen Centers: Many communities are experimenting with models of care that combine recreational spaces where youth can spend time with peers in addition to attending appointments for mental health, tutoring, and college and career counseling. They’re located in storefronts, shopping centers and community centers, and accessible via public transportation including bus routes from schools. UpStreet in Pittsburgh is a great example. (Or, if you want to go abroad, check out Jigsaw at multiple locations throughout Ireland).

Many communities are making the decision to place critically needed services like medical, behavioral, dental, and vision care directly in schools so that all young people have easy access. Here’s what that looks like in communities close to ours:

• At 31 schools in Montgomery County, the Department of Health and Human Services along with other local public and private nonprofit agencies offer counseling, psychiatric care, support groups and more. At 12 school-based health centers youth and families can get physicals, immunizations and prescriptions.
• In DC Public Schools, the Department of Behavioral Services and community-based organizations offer family functional therapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy, parent-child interaction therapy, substance abuse services and more—even if students also have an outside provider.
• At Alexandria’s two high school campuses, any resident aged 12-19 can visit the Teen Wellness Center tp receive free, confidential care including mental health and substance abuse counseling and reproductive health services. Non-confidential services include vaccines and treatment for minor illnesses.

One final point I’ll make: if we really want our young people to feel capable, resourceful and valuable, we have to treat them that way. And that means using a human-centered design approach that centers their ideas and involves them in creating any programs or solutions we develop for their benefit. We also know that having a sense of purpose protects our mental health—which means the young person who co-creates the solution may happily never need it.

Last Saturday I went to Baltimore to attend an education conference and hear a talk by Shelley Moore, a Canadian educator, researcher and storyteller.

Shelley asked us to define for ourselves each of these terms:

• Exclusion
• Segregation
• Inclusion
• Integration

​Next, she showed us this slide:​

What do you think? Which one of A, B, C or D represents inclusion? Which one shows integration? How about exclusion and segregation?

(You think about it for a minute while I eat a quick snack. :) Then scroll down a little for the Big Reveal.)

What’s the difference between “exclusion” and “segregation”? According to Shelley, exclusion is when the people inside the circle decide that individuals can’t be part of their community. Segregation happens when the people inside the circle decide that a particular group (or groups) don’t belong.

Shelley distinguishes between “integration” and “inclusion” in this way: integration happens when someone decides that it’s a good idea for those outside the circle to be brought in—but it’s often not by their own choice. She says it’s like a mandatory all-staff meeting: you know you have to attend, but when you get to the meeting you’ll likely sit next to your closest co-workers and you may not be all that interested in the updates from other teams or departments (particularly if you’re thinking, “This meeting could have been an email!”)

FYI, this tendency to prefer the company of your own group is perfectly natural, and at times necessary and comforting: Shelley calls it “congregation” when we are birds of a feather flocking together. (As a side question, Shelley asks: do our schools offer spaces and opportunities for congregation?)

Inclusion is different from integration because instead of thinking “I have to,” we think “I want to.”  That’s why the community in Shelley’s top circle looks different from the one on the lower right.


Except… after she’d shared this slide dozens if not hundreds of times, one of Shelley’s graduate students told her, “Shelley, I don’t think that this diagram [the top circle] is inclusion either.” And once her student pointed out a few things, Shelley realized the student was absolutely right.

Can you figure out why? There’s more than one change Shelley made; I’ll share them in Part Two next week.

 Good teachers and school leaders routinely work to connect the curriculum to their students' local community. "Place-based education" leverages local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences to make learning more relevant and engaging.

Often this takes the form of interdisciplinary projects involving field work or culminating in field trips. For older students, it might be service learning or internships.

But there's a more radical form of place-based learning, one that dissolves the traditional distinctions between "school" and "community." Teaching and learning are happening in spaces shared by local businesses, cultural institutions and other organizations--to everyone's benefit. 

​Here are nine examples from across the country:

(if you are looking at this on a phone, I apologize that the captions are covering up the pictures...)
​
Examples like these inspire me. I think about the incredible assets and opportunities we have here in Arlington and I wonder: what kinds of programs and partnerships could we create in the future?

For instance, (and purely hypothetically), what about a high school program with a focus on  international relations, offered in partnership with the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, USAID (Crystal City office), IDS International, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and/or GMU's Schar School of Policy and Government?

While we're dreaming, how about a healthcare-focused high school program, where students are learning at INOVA, Virginia Hospital Center, and/or one of the many national associations headquartered in the county (the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the National Council on Aging, the National Diabetes Association, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation, and more)?

Students interested in the environment could enroll in a program that places them at the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the EPA (Crystal City office), the Student Conservation Association, or Trout Unlimited.

In the area of aerospace, engineering and national defense we have in Arlington Raytheon, BAE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, CNA and the Office of Naval Research. 

Performing arts: Signature Theater, Synetic Theater, Avant Bard, the Museum of Contemporary Art and more.

Education: Council for Exceptional Children, National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, Communities in Schools, National Science Teachers Association, Organization for Autism Research, National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and more.

Media: PBS, WETA, Politico, Axios, WJLA, and Arlington Independent Media. 

This is by no means a complete list--but you get the idea. 

Local governments are grappling with rising commercial vacancy rates. Companies are feeling their way forward in the new world of hybrid and remote work. School districts are looking for ways to reimagine teaching and learning so that students are engaged and ready to thrive in their lives after graduation.

I think there's an opportunity here. If schools co-locate with organizations that can contribute real-world, place-based learning experiences, could we use our urban spaces more effectively and imaginatively? Would companies feel a different and deeper sense of commitment to our community, and less tempted to relocate? 

​I'm intrigued by the possibilities, and I'd be curious to learn what you think, too.