The bane of the college professor’s life, these days, seems to be  students  texting in class.  As a Professor of Behavioral Science at NYIT, I have firsthand experience with this irritation. It is rude, distracting  and has reached epidemic proportions.  Within the last several years, I have had to compete with cell phones for my students’ attention on a moment to moment basis.  The problem is compounded because some students legitimately use their computers to take notes; I said some, not all. It’s often impossible tell which is which without actually walking behind someone and taking a look.  Last semester, I walked behind one such coed  and saw that she was doing her online shopping during class. I looked at the outfit she was about to buy and said out loud: ” The dress on the left suits you better!”  She was embarrassed but later thanked me for alerting her to a serious problem–she realized that she was addicted to her electronic devices.  And she was right, it is an addiction.  So what is a professor to do?   I tell my classes about the online video of a professor, who in utter frustration, takes a student’s cell phone and smashing against a wall.l  I tell my students that he’s my role-model.  I want to be like him when I grow up.

I have developed my own creative solution, using a technique from my training as a group therapist. It’s called ‘joining’ and the idea is to go along with the behavior rather than try to oppose it.  It’s based on the concept in physics that two objects can not occupy the same place at the same time.  This is how it works.  At the beginning of each class, I enter the room and blow a whistle and shout:” TEXT!”  The students have five minutes to text as much and as fast as they can. I insist on  it.  If I see a student not texting, I approach them and say, paradoxically and with humor: ” When I tell you to text, you text.  I don’t care if you don’t get a signal.  You TEXT!’   After five minutes, I blow the whistle again and say:” Texting stop!”.  Does it solve tell problem?, you ask.  Yes and no.  While most students stop texting, there are some who don’t and they try all types of clever ways to try to hide it.  But they can’t selfiehide from an alert text detector.  Some coeds place their pocketbooks in front of them and text behind the bag.  One student, puts his cell phone on his lap.  When I see this sort of thing happening, I never address the offender directly. I turn to an attentive student and say:” What’s the unspoken message to me when someone continues to text after I blow the whistle?”   The student replies: “They are flipping you the bird!” This often leads into a discussion about motivation, particularly as it applies to adolescent oppositional behavior.  It’s as if they are saying:” No adult is going to tell me what to do!”   Recently a very cooperative student pointed out that my whistle-blowing technique is somewhat flawed.  He told me, in front of the class, that I would get a stronger, louder whistle if I held the whistle upside-down.  Eureka. It worked.  I said:” You get extra credit for that piece of advice!”