The School Hall Pass Is Going Digital. Is That a Good Thing?
I just read this article in EdSurge and it reminded me of the difference in school systems. I’m not sure if most Norwegians even know what a hall pass is. Oh, I stand corrected, we all watch series and movies from American high schools. There is no such thing as hall passes in the schools I know of. Most interestingly we trust our students to behave. That said of course some students do this;
“We were seeing a lot of kids strategically ask to go to the bathroom to meet up with other friends in the hallway,” says Christopher Sefcheck, superintendent of the New Kensington-Arnold School District. “It’s a filter to help us eliminate some of those things.”
For instance, a school official can change settings in the electronic hall pass system to prevent certain students from getting a pass at the same time. And the system can notify officials if a student is asking to leave class with unusual frequency, which might have gone unnoticed in settings where students have different class periods with different teachers throughout the day.
Seems like a lot of energy on management might not align with the buzz words like;
- Critical thinking.
- Communication skills.
- Creativity.
- Problem-solving.
- Perseverance.
- Collaboration.
- Information literacy.
- Technology skills and digital literacy.
“We could have someone in the hallway all day if we wanted to do that—we could just sit in the hallway and watch,” says Sefcheck, the school superintendent. And he says the digital system can reduce interruptions, since students fill out the passes online. “We were always writing passes for kids. Now the teacher doesn’t have to stop class to write out a pass.”