Cell phones and downpours

This week's Mr. Teacher column on education.com is all about the issues of cell phones in school. Thankfully, I don't have to deal with that too much, at least not as much as many high school and middle school teachers do. I still just can't get over the images from those videos in Dangerously Irrelevant's entry to last week's Carnival of Education.

It rained all day long today. And by rain, I mean unleashed a monsoon. Ironically, it was hot and stuffy in my classroom because the air-conditioning is not working. It was the same way yesterday. I had my windows open for a little bit, but when the windowsill started getting wet, I had to close them most of the way.

One of the other teachers who goes home via the same route that I do came in at the end of the day and told me that a nearby road on our route was flooded. So we spent about 10 minutes online trying to map out an alternate route. That task took us right past White Rock Lake, and it was a little bit scary to drive past it because it looked like it was about an inch and a half away from overflowing and flooding the road we were on. Which may very well have happened by now, since we were driving through a deluge as we passed by.

Closer to my house, there are some soccer fields and a tiny little park area on either side of the road. These areas are now under about 10 feet of water.

If it doesn't stop raining soon, I might have to rent a Skidoo to get to school tomorrow!!

I also wanted to say that since hosting last week's Carnival, I've seen a bump in traffic, and it's awesome. If you haven't already done so, I invite you all to subscribe to the Learn Me Good feed either by e-mail here, or by RSS here.

Hands-free? Try brain-free!

A story in the Dallas Morning News warns that it may very soon be illegal and fineable to use a cell phone for calls or texting in a DISD school zone.

Yeah, that's all well and good to make that announcement, but what I really want to know is -- who exactly are they expecting to enforce this law?

As you know, I work out in the school zone every morning before classes. And I consistently see people speeding -- parents, teachers, and bus drivers -- which I'm pretty certain is illegal as well. But what is happening to these people? Absolutely nothing. I think there was ONE day, last year, when a police officer was near the school and wrote a couple of tickets.

But otherwise, the speed limit is not enforced. Anonymous Joe and I tell people to slow down, but we have no real authority over them (and usually the people just tell us that they were going 20 anyway, even when it's obvious they were going over 30). If they pass this law that makes cell phones illegal in the school zone, that will just serve as another annoyance to Anonymous Joe and me. Because WE'LL be the ones that have to tell people, "You know, it's illegal now to use your cell phone in the school zone." To which people will undoubtedly reply, "I was just holding my phone, I wasn't using it," or, "I know, but this is a really important call!"

My suggestion to the city of Dallas is don't worry about proposing new laws until you put a system in place to enforce the existing ones. Assign a police officer to park his car in the street right behind my school, and I guarantee you he'll be busy for an hour writing tickets.

I'm not even suggesting that we need a police officer for every school for every day. But how about rotating them randomly through a set of schools so that they're at my school one day every two weeks. And no one will know when that day is going to be. THEN maybe people will have the fear in them enough to actually drive the speed limit.

And only then will people have the fear in them not to use a cell phone when dropping their kids off.