Phone policy for high school
Where do you all stand when it comes to enforcing phone policy and making students place them in the holster or rack at the top of class and throughout? I posted in r/teachers about this, and they all lost their minds and said it's appalling that any substitute wouldn't follow this basic protocol. In my state, it is not a law, and most teachers don't explicitly request that you enforce the phone rule, but a few will indeed make this request in their sub plans.
In my experience subbing for high school, students definitely aren't expecting you to enforce the phone rule and it is definitely seen by them as unnecessarily strict. I know it is not our job to be liked, but it also doesn't have to be our job to be hated. I feel like there's a middle ground here... given that when I don't say anything about the phones, everything seems... fine. The handout or the work on Google Classroom still tends to get completed. If anyone is doing something on their phone that is distracting to other students, I just tell them to stop doing that and it's usually no longer a problem. And if those same students don't have their phones... well, they'll just do the same shit or something comparable on their chrome books, which are still permitted.
I'm still kind of irked by everyone on r/teachers calling it a "basic instruction." It is absolutely no small task to get a room full of 30 teenagers to comply with this. We have no relationships or real leverage with any of them and they know it. We are 10x more vulnerable to aggressive push-back or, in the worst case scenario, false accusations. Substitute teaching is a matter of picking your battles. I think phones is the wrong one.