Bridging the Gap 4 Student Success Foundation

My heart truly goes out to teachers. 💔

The daily frustration of trying to teach students who are constantly on their cell phones is real.

When I’m only in schools as a guest speaker for one day, it already grates my nerves to repeatedly ask students to put their phones away or take their headphones off. I can’t imagine dealing with that every single day.

A teacher shared with me yesterday that she actually has to negotiate with her students just to teach. She told them, “If you’ll get off your phones and give me 15 minutes, I’ll let you get back on them.”

How did we get here—where teachers are negotiating with students just to do their jobs?!?!

She was also frustrated with administration because, although students aren’t supposed to have their phones out, there are no real consequences when rules are broken. Without support, teachers’ hands are tied—and learning suffers.

Something has to change. Our teachers deserve better support, and our students deserve better boundaries.

It certainly feels like we are dealing with a major cell phone addiction, and it’s showing up in our schools in ways that should concern every parent and educator.

Why Snapchat is awesome!

1) Very popular and most kids use it.
2) The filters on Snapchat are very fun to use.
3) Automatically hides information from parents.
4) Has a secret pass-coded picture vault.
5) Automatically logs devices out when logged into on another device.

Why not Snapchat is not so awesome!

1) Parents can't check kids' phones for content incoming or outgoing.
2) Lots of inappropriate behaviors posted on Snapchat desensitize kids to reality. (N**e photos, drugs, parties, crimes, po*******hy, fights, pranks, challenges, etc.)
3) Parents can't monitor or filter information being seen.
4) Parents can't check who is talking to their children.
5) Parents have to blindly trust their young teens in a very hazardous environment.
6) Snapchat can broadcast your child's location within 10 feet.
7) Most predators highly recommend Snapchat to kids they are speaking with.
8 - Snapchat comes with a built in AI (Artificial Intelligence) buddy that acts as a therapist, counselor, map, homework helper, dating advocate, s*x advice, legal assistant, and much more. AI's functionality is very untested and should not be administered to kids at this time.
9 - Once addicted to Snapchat, kids will do almost anything to have more Snapchat. It is very similar to what happens when people are addicted to hard drugs.

I strongly recommend 18 (previously 16) be a better age for Snapchat to be allowed on phones. I see many terrible things at school come across Snapchat and parents have no way to see what that is. It is common for 75% of girls in high school to have sent out naked pictures and most of those have been sent on Snapchat. I also see kids get completely addicted (4-10 hours per day) to time that is completely wasted and will not have any return on time used.

Why risk this as a parent?

1) I want to be the "cool parent".
2) I'm tired of arguing with my kid about it.
3) I have no idea what Snapchat is.
4) All the other kids have it. FOMO
5) I trust my kid and nothing you say will change that.
6) My kid is different than any other kid.

Did you know Snapchat has a built-in secret picture vault with its own password? Yup, most parents don’t know about this either. (See my previous post about how to find the secret vault which is called My Eyes Only).

Most online predators love it when parents give their children Snapchat as there is no way to monitor it. I personally consider any device that has Snapchat an unmonitored device no matter how good parents think they are at technology.

Did you know spambots can send unsolicited po*******hy indiscriminately to usernames on Snapchat? Phone checks are not going to uncover this feature.

Please put some serious thought into letting your children have an application on their cell phones that hides information from parents.

Happy Parenting,

Officer Gomez

In 2000, a Minnesota student was told she failed the math portion of the state’s Basic Standards Tests. Her father repeatedly asked to review the exam, but the state staff refused for weeks.

After he threatened legal action, officials allowed him to examine the test, and he and state employees found scoring problems. A later review concluded that a set of scoring/answer-key errors on one form of the math test had produced incorrect results for tens of thousands of students—about 45,739 in grades 8–12.

Thousands of students who had been told they failed were later found to have passed. The incident became a major example of how testing errors can affect high-stakes outcomes.

Governor Brian Kemp signs disability wage reform into law! Great news for Georgians!

https://www.wjcl.com/article/georgia-ends-subminimum-wage-disabled-workers/64648109

Yep!

TikTok · Dead A*z Hilarious 2.9M likes, 19.6K comments. “Some of these teachers would’ve had me fouled 😂😂 Video credits: and other creators who used”

Atlanta metro

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