I Refused the School-Issued Chromebook for My Middle-Schooler. You Can Too. Here's How.
We're not anti-tech. We're pro-learning, pro-childhood, and pro-teachers.
When my daughter entered 6th grade, she and her peers moved from their elementary school into the middle school building— a giant public school in our neighborhood with nearly a thousand 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.
As is now a norm in nearly 90% of American public schools, my daughter and her peers were issued an internet-connected laptop. The district expectation was that these newly minted middle schoolers would have access to all the digital materials now required for learning.
Having taught middle school for 12 years myself, I knew that middle school is always a time of transition, so I expected some ups and downs. But I didn’t expect my daughter to start experiencing near-daily headaches. I didn’t notice it at first— I just thought she was tired or dehydrated.
But then I realized how much pediatric Advil we were going through. I’m one of those parents that does not use even over the counter medications very often so it caught my attention.
Something wasn’t right.
We went to the pediatrician. We went to a naturopath. We visited the optometrist. We got her a prescription for reading glasses. We got an accommodation report that instructed her to do things like “take visual breaks” from her school-issued laptop, “place sticky notes on the sides of the screen” to increase her peripheral awareness, and to “use paper and write notes by hand” as often as possible.
The glasses helped a little, when my daughter remembered to wear them. But the headaches persisted and her feelings about school turned negative— school was something she “had to get through,” the day was “just so long.”
At the same time this was happening, my professional life was all about advocating for reducing, delaying, and limiting screen use in childhood, initially with regards to smartphones and tablets and social media, but increasingly about school-issued tech too. My child didn’t have a smartphone1 or social media accounts, and the screentime she had at home was limited.
Yet at school each day, she could theoretically spend hours a day on her laptop at school, and I had no visibility into what she was doing online, what sites she visited, or what apps she was using. The district website assured parents that “filtering protocols” were in place, but I knew from my work that parental controls were a weak support tool at best, and often easily worked around. A district with over 40,000 students couldn’t possibly monitor and manage all internet access for all students (and all students, K-12, had been given personal, internet-connected 1:1 devices).
A few months into the school year, I realized that if I was going to talk my talk (“get kids off screens as much as possible”) then I had to walk my walk (“get my own child off screens as much as possible.”)
Which meant it was time to say No to the school-issued laptop.
But as a former teacher, I knew how hard it was when a parent made requests to accommodate one child in a unique way. I knew that her teachers were already dealing with excessively large class sizes (36 students in her Science class, for example, and later, 39 students in her English class) and also struggling to monitor and manage the laptop use of all the students in those large classes.
My approach has always been about being tech-intentional. And my definition for this approach is grounded in three simple ideas:
Less is more.
Later is better.
Relationships and skills before screens.
I knew that in order to make changes around school-based technology use for all children, I needed to start by building relationships with the school leadership team. A few months into her 6th grade year, I sent my daughter’s principal and school counselor an email simply to ask if I could meet with them to discuss school laptops. I was polite and appreciative for the work they do and recognized that they were not necessarily the decision-makers around how school laptops were issued or used. They agreed to meet. (You can find sample letter templates in my Unplug EdTech Toolkit).
I have been extremely fortunate in having a school principal who listened to and understood my concerns. Together, the school leadership team agreed to accommodate my request for the following school year: to permit my daughter to opt out of the school-issued laptop.
We came up with a plan:
Inform the district of my intention to refuse the laptop and to ask them how they would support the school in accommodating parents who requested this. I also requested a meeting with them to share my concerns and ask questions.
I would work with my daughter to help her understand that opting her out wasn’t punitive, and was in fact an attempt to help her learning experience improve. We strategized about what to say when her classmates asked her “Why don’t you have a laptop?” We came up with: “I learn better without a computer,” which was a response that was true, didn’t blame the teachers, and didn’t make other students feel bad. (The first day of school without the laptop, students did ask her this. She gave her answer. They shrugged and said, “Ok” and that was that.)
Before school started, I sent personal emails to all her individual teachers (templates for these in the Toolkit) explaining our reasoning and thanking them in advance for the support. I also offered to supply extra printing paper or print worksheets off at home, if that helped ease the burden. I acknowledged that I was asking more of them. Almost every single teacher responded positively.
In previous school years, I had already opted my daughter out of state standardized testing, digital mental health assessments, and Naviance,2 so we didn’t have to figure out how she was going to take the tests or assessments, because she was already opted out. (I recognize not all states allow parents to opt out of testing. This is unfortunate. I still encourage parents to ask.3)
There were definitely areas where we had to compromise. My daughter can still access her Schoology account on a home computer (which she does on occasion) and in the rare circumstance when she needed a computer for an in-class word processing assignment, the school counselor had a spare loaner computer that she could borrow. For any schoolwork that required viewing something online, she would share with a classmate.4
My daughter’s seventh grade year went pretty smoothly— as much as seventh grade can. She was able to complete classwork and homework almost entirely on paper, and her teachers were supportive. She also didn’t have to lug a heavy laptop back and forth to school, and she even complained of her hand hurting from writing so much.
Because things were planned out, handled in the context of respectful relationships, and my daughter was prepped in advance, our opt-out experience has gone as well as we could have hoped for. Now in 8th grade, my daughter is still laptop-free and doing great in school.5 Next year, she heads into high school. I’ve already reached out to the guidance counselor there and explained we would be continuing with this process during high school, and to please let me know if there were any questions.6
I expected a lot of these positive changes when we refused the laptop. But I was extra happy when I realized how full the bottle of Advil was a few months into our opt-out experience.
Her headaches were gone.
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And at nearly age 15, she still uses a flip phone, not a smartphone, and shares mine when she wants to FaceTime or text or friends. She’s managing just fine.
A Class Action lawsuit against Naviance just settled: https://www.powerschoolnaviancesettlement.com/
If you are told you are not allowed to opt out of testing, maybe your child is sick on testing day.
It’s worth pointing out that this was not ideal. Sharing a laptop was still using a laptop. But if it meant she couldn’t participate in the lesson, that wasn’t ideal either.
She is also smartphone-free too, which is, at 14 and in 8th grade, a somewhat rare occurrence. For communicating with us after school and when she’s out of the house, she uses a flip phone. For staying in touch with friends, she and I share my phone number, which allows her to Facetime and text from an iPad. Sharing a phone doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s worked really well for us, and in many ways, has strengthened our relationship. That’s an essay for another time. :)
It is worth noting that I have shifted from “asking” to opt out to “telling” them that we are opting out. I’m not opting out of curriculum, I am opting out of giving my child a distracting internet-connected device that I know will interfere with her ability to focus, the data mining of the platforms used, and the overall extra screentime I know she will have. It’s also worth noting that I do not believe that providing everyone the option to opt out is the end goal. I believe it’s a means to a different end— one where computer use is done thoughtfully and intentionally, such as within a computer lap, and meets the four criteria of effective, safe, legal, and superior to a human teacher. Currently, no EdTech product meets that criteria.