Let's Stop Being So Available

I had a shocking experience in the Adult Classroom this week (it was not at the Italian American Association, but in a company). I realized that many adults can't detach from their cell phones anymore.

There have been cell phones in my classes for as long as I remember, but the difference is that in the past they were a discreet presence. You would do a hip grab to see if that ringing phone was yours, you might pull it out of your pocket to see who called or where the message came from, if you actually took it out all the way you would be genuinely embarassed to take attention away from those around you.

That has changed. Apparently people are now allowed to disengage on a near constant basis. What I mean by this is that they were physically present in the space (a small group course, workshop format) yet they continued working with their laptops and cell phones as if they were in their office and not in a classroom, and when I say working, I mean checking their emails and text messages and responding to them in real time all the while I am trying to teach the coolest lesson plan I have come up with in a decade and yet I am feeling like an analog dinosaur speaking in Morse Code because they are just NOT FOLLOWING ME AT ALL.

What I wanted to say to these people was this:

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN BE AVAILABLE 24 HOURS A DAY, DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD.

The messages I received:
Real people are a waste of time.
Creativity is not useful.
The participant is in no way responsible for the success of a course. 

One student even told me that she "tuned out" because I showed a video that was longer than 4 minutes. Wow.

So it was a depressing day because it didn't matter what I did, there was always going to be something better going on somewhere else.

And it hurt. Boy, did it hurt. I have never left a workshop with less energy than I had going in. I usually go home riding high on the energy of an excellent group making something incredible out of nothing.

At first I couldn't figure out where I went wrong.

Yes, there were a ton of unforeseen annoying obstacles because there always are. Normally we get past them with a little empathy and a sense of humor. Technology that doesn't work the way we want, a room that doesn't fit our needs,  big whoop, we laugh and go to Plan B.

But this time there was no shared understanding. Instead, each glitch was an opportunity to check email again (and rack up nasty feedback points for the form at the end of the day).

Phones and laptops became barriers that never allowed us to connect as human beings, and that broken circuit made all the lights go out on the string.

There is a huge price to pay for this semi-presence.

1. It kills the vibe of an otherwise positive atmosphere.
2. It communicates disrespect for colleagues and the instructor.
3. It substitutes reflection with distraction. 
4. It makes it impossible to create a productive working group.

It's not just in the classroom, though. Even in restaurants, chefs are getting annoyed at people taking constant photos of their food rather than enjoying the experience. One article I read (which I can't find at the moment) linked an increase in complaints for cold food with people taking longer to eat it because they have to photograph it first.

They say success is a string of failures. I count yesterday as a turning point (which is what you call a failure when you don't want to keep feeling like a loser) because it made me approach my next workshop differently. I planned like crazy, put as much paper material together as possible and ordered a room with only chairs. Then I made an excellently detailed plan with a disclaimer.

PARTICIPANTS ARE STRONGLY RECOMMENDED TO REFRAIN FROM BRINGING ELECTRONIC DEVICES INTO THE CLASSROOM.

And just to make my point, I turned off my own phone for an entire six hours. When I turned it back on, I was happy to note a good 15 different fires that had been addressed to me and subsequently (and rightly) extinguished by somebody else because I was not available.