Teachers with knowledge of tech addiction will help improve academic performance
The world is shifting dramatically fast. In fact, the childhood you can remember is vastly different from the one your own kids will experience. Screen Education understands the gap that occurs due to the development and saturation of technology in modern society. On a mission to help society address issues, Screen Education has launched a new teacher training service that will help teachers address the problem of tech addiction among their students.
Today, technology is helping youth to be hyper-connected, but on the other side, their addiction is causing social, emotional, cognitive, and physical problems in young people. Students holding their smartphones could produce detrimental effects for the long-term, which they are not aware of, and this is of great concern to many schools.
Michael Mercier, President of Screen Education explains, “Everyday teachers encounter students who are distracted during class, who don’t complete homework, who are anxious and depressed, who lack basic social skills, and who don’t get enough sleep. Our training is designed to assist schools that are struggling to address this problem.”
Teacher training to teach students self-respect
Screen Education has spent 3 ½ years on research and speaking over ‘how to tackle this tech-addictive scenario’, which results good as the teacher training is comprised of two components: a seminar and an optional workshop.
The Seminar provides teachers with a deeper understanding of tech addiction and a planning template for addressing it. The optional workshop is designed to immediately follow the seminar as well as it will guide teachers step-by-step through the process of using the planning template to create a detailed action plan they can implement immediately.
The seminar covers the following topics:
- The causes of tech addiction
- The negative consequences of tech addiction
- The challenge of overcoming tech addiction
- Our research on kids’ own feelings about their tech addiction
- The spectrum of possible behavioral outcomes
- How school stakeholders can support, or obstruct, teachers’ efforts
- The techniques teachers can use to help students overcome their tech addiction
The workshop covers the following planning decisions:
- Defining the behavioral outcomes educators wish to achieve
- Choosing the tools of influence to use
- Determining stakeholder strategies
- Creating an action plan
- Creating an implementation calendar
Smartphone addiction has become a global public health crisis, and some therapists are suggesting that giving your child a smartphone is like “giving them a gram of drugs”. “If students are taught self-respect they are less likely to exploit themselves,” suggested Mandy Saligari, Addiction Therapist.
Speaking at an education conference in London, the Harley Street rehab clinic specialist explained that Snapchat and Instagram can be just as dangerously addictive for teenagers as drugs and alcohol.
