Dear TEACHER_NAME,

I personally believe that you should stick with Policy 2 - do not allow students to have cell phones in school at all. Students are getting let loose too much nowadays. I, as a student, have seen myself the chaos cell phones can create. Students steal other students' phones for fun, and the student gets angry and annoyed and begins a verbal fight, which distracts from the other students from learning and the teachers from doing their job.

Students walk and drop their phones all the time, and the next day they come to the police officer's office to ask them to look for their phone, and then they have to go through the whole process of marking down information, asking people if they've seen the phone, and investigating, maybe even going to court. If students were not allowed to bring phones, this problem would never occur.

I have seen way too many students texting in class when it is totally clear that they are not allowed to. They text under tables and desks. They text behind books and binders. They pretend to drop pencils and paper just to bend down to check their phone. A fellow student once asked me if I could move in front of her so that she could use text. In fact, some kids purposely choose seats in the back for that purpose. I even witnessed a student who had hid their phone up their sleeve, and whenever it vibrated, they would pull the sleeve to make room to see it and reply, then cover it up again. Unbelievable, right?

Students who have their own mobile internet or 4G go on social networking sites such as Facebook all the time, right under the table. They take pictures and upload them. They go on Youtube and use their phone as a makeshift music player. They check their mail. With phones like that, there's not much need for computers and laptops anymore, except the difference in speed. Once the phones begin to load faster and be able to store more memory, phones in school will be everywhere.

Even the most innocent child could be lurking behind a textbook texting. And that reminds me of something my friend joked to me about. "Do you know why those big books in our school are called textbooks?" "Uh, because they're filled with text?" "No, stupid. Because you can text behind them. You use them to text!" Cheesy, but pretty true and only a small taste of how phones are changing schools and learning. Students are even redefining words! Amazing what a tiny electronic can do!

Phones need to go. Like, for real. Don't take those excuses of "Oh but I need my phone to tell my mom that I'm coming home late!" or

"I need to tell RELATIVE_NAME

that I can't come over after school! Please let me use my phone!" That's no excuse for taking out your phone. There are at least 100 phones in the school - use those for your communication or reminding purposes. If there's a fire there are still going to be 100 phones for you to use. And if you're getting abused or kidnapped somewhere you shouldn't have gone away from school grounds alone - that is your fault.

So you see TEACHER_NAME, there's no need for phones. They cause more bad then good. They should be banned.