Class Cell Phones

My 6th grade and middle school students, especially the girls, are giving me headaches with their cell phone blunders. I say "blunders" because to me that is what they are: the girls pull a cell phone out of a pocket when they think I am not looking, check their messages (or whatever), and then--ever so (they think) casually--slide the phone back into the pocket.

To me it's a blunder on their part because I see the whole thing happening.

What? Am I stupid? Blind?

This is what really stirs me up, the fact that they think they are being sneaky and getting away with it.

I stand in front of the class (8 or 9 hagwon students) and have a bird's-eye-view . . . I know who is, or isn't, goofing off and who is paying attention, let alone who is, or isn't, using a cell phone.

Perhaps I need to pull a stunt that a foreign teacher at a Japanese university did shortly before I started teaching there.

It went something like this:

*Warn the students not to use cell phones in class.

*Tell the students that cell phones will be confiscated if they are used in class.

*Bring an empty plastic cassette case to class and hide it in your podium.

*Confiscate a cell phone that is being used in class (look for the hand below the desk and the head pointed towards the knee).

*Pretend to drop the cell phone on the floor, but secretly substitute it for the cassette case.

*Crush the cassette case with your foot, maliciously.

*Watch the student cry.

*Then whip out the cell phone and call your friend/mother/police in a foreign country. $Cha-ching!

*Watch the student cry again.

No, for now just a stern warning. But, somehow, I don't think that warning will be enough. Sigh. I hate acting the bad guy, but I think that little drama is coming soon.