Schools that don't allow backpacks? Huh?

shennie
Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:25:25 +0000

I work in a middle school. We do not allow students to use backpacks during the day. When you have a classroom with 25 kids and each one has a backpack with most of their belongings in it, it becomes very difficult to walk around the classroom. Teachers standing up in front of the class should be a thing of the past. Teachers and kids need to be able to move freely around the classroom without having to step over all that stuff. The second reason we don’t allow them is that if they have all their stuff with them, it is often impossible for them to find the stuff they actually need for a particular class. They spend half the class digging through everything looking for last night’s homework. The no back pack rule does force them to be a bit more organized.

We have had that rule since before cellphones became an issue, but if we hadn’t had it before, the prevelance of cell phones and ipods would have caused the rule to be implemented.