Mom Wants To Report Her Daughter’s Teacher For Taking Her Phone And Not Giving It Back Because ‘She Needs To Learn To Not Use It In Class’
The state the phone was finally returned in made matters worse.
Robert Kneschke / Shutterstock Posting to the subreddit "r/AITA," a 41-year-old woman shared that her 15-year-old daughter's phone was confiscated by her teacher during class. Though she agreed that her daughter should not use her phone during class time, the teacher's actions afterward are what truly angered the mom.
She questioned if she should report her daughter's teacher after her phone was taken during class and not returned.
In her Reddit post, the mom explained that she'd picked up her daughter Hannah from school one day and learned that her teacher, Ms. K, had taken her phone because she had been using it during class. She informed her daughter that she should've kept her phone in her pocket, but Hannah admitted that Ms. K still had the device, despite the school day being over.
At first, Hannah's mother thought it was weird that the phone hadn't been returned, but was sure that Ms. K would return it to her daughter in the morning when she arrived for class. However, that wasn't the case and as each day passed, Hannah repeatedly asked her teacher for her phone back, only to be refused.
After a couple of days passed, Hannah's mother sent an email to Ms. K inquiring when she should expect the phone to be returned. She added that she'd like for her daughter to have her phone before she had to work over the weekend, but didn't get a reply.
"A whole week of this passes. Today, Hannah gets in my car and tells me she asked and Ms. K didn't even answer. She just ignored her," the mom revealed. "I lost my patience and went into the school. I found Ms. K standing outside her classroom and told her it was time she give me the phone back."
Ms. K told her that Hannah needed to stop using her phone during class, to which the mom agreed. However, she insisted that it isn't acceptable to keep the device for longer than the allotted school hours.
Many schools have begun implementing policies that ban students from using their phones during school hours. In 2015, 66% of U.S. schools had cellphone bans, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. By 2020, the percentage of schools with bans had jumped to 77%. Some states, such as California, Tennessee, and Florida, have passed laws allowing schools to restrict cellphone use.
Some schools have seen an improvement in student's academic performances and a decrease in stress and anxiety caused by the excessive use of their phones during school hours.
The teacher ended up returning the phone, but her daughter noticed something strange about her device.
"I made a scene, students and teachers alike were staring, but she relented and said she would get the phone out of her office and came back with it about the minutes later," she continued. After getting the phone back, Hannah's mother didn't turn it on or check it closely, not thinking she needed to.
The mom kept the phone and didn't give it back to her daughter until she completed her assignments. When Hannah finally got her phone back she was in a panic. Not only was her device's screen newly cracked, but she also had to reenter her Apple ID information, which she found odd.
When she looked at her account settings, she noticed something even stranger — a second Apple ID had been added with Ms. K's full name and accompanying avatar. Hannah and her mother also discovered that Ms. K had likely merged her data onto the phone as they found some new and unknown contacts.
"I lost it, told Hannah she can't use the phone for now because I'm worried if Ms. K has access to anything on her end, and sent an email to her demanding an explanation. There has not been a reply," she wrote. "I'm seriously considering reporting her to an administrator and having her pay for the screen repair, but my husband thinks that will cause her to retaliate on our daughter and that I might have overstepped by confronting her today."
Her husband tried to give Ms. K the benefit of the doubt, hypothesizing that the teacher must have made a mistake and accidentally thought she was using her own phone. He promised that he had a friend in tech who could separate the two Apple IDs and argued that she should let the entire situation go since Hannah got her phone back. The mom, however, is adamant about taking this issue to a higher-up at the school.
"I agree that he might be right about Ms. K retaliating, and I might be overreacting, but I'm having a hard time accepting the state that she returned Hannah's phone and just letting things go."
People online insisted that she should immediately report her daughter's teacher for violating her privacy.
In the comments section, Redditors unanimously felt that Ms. K should be properly reprimanded by higher-ups at the school. They insisted that administrators should be made aware that a teacher in their school is not only taking students' phones for days at a time but returning them in poor and obviously-used condition.
Photo: Oksana Kuzmina / Shutterstock
"Send an email to the principal outlining the situation as briefly as you can. Your daughter's property was confiscated but it was returned damaged and obviously tampered with," one Reddit user advised. "This teacher violated your daughter's privacy."
"Be matter of fact, and ask for a meeting to discuss the situation, how the school will compensate for the phone damage, and what consequences there will be for the device tampering and privacy violation," they continued. "Give a deadline for them to respond, with a promise to escalate if there is no response."
"Report it now," another commenter recommended. "Sounds more like she was trying to steal the phone. Don’t erase it yet because that is the evidence you need. Most school policies don’t let the teachers keep the phone past the end of the school day. She kept it for a WEEK. It should have been returned at the end of the day."
Students should not be on a personal device during class time, and teachers have every right to confiscate a phone and keep it for the remainder of the day. However, once the bell rings and the school day is over, that device should be returned to either the student or the parent.
Keeping a device overnight can be a safety hazard in instances where students have to walk home alone and need their phones in case of emergency. In the same vein, some argued that students shouldn't even have their phones taken at school because of the risk that if something happens, they will be unable to contact their parents or the authorities.
While there is an argument for both sides of the coin, most people agree that this specific teacher was wholeheartedly in the wrong for not only keeping a student's phone but also using it as her own.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.