One of the hallmarks of my business classes was bringing them real-world situations. I told a lot of stories about me and my friends and so I had a series of law stories based on Lakewood. This was not my idea. Rob Shurich before did this before me and gave me the idea. His stories were about the people he grew up with in New Jersey. I am teaching away and we started to talk about the differences in laws as they apply to schools. Kids are big on the 1st and 4th Amendments in school. I asked my principal to join us because he was an expert on school law. I had just finished the class for my principal’s license but it still hit home better with the principal in the room. We were talking away about Telo v. New Jersey and Tinker v. Des Moines. All was going well until THE QUESTION came along. What about PDAs in school?
I went off! I am an advocate for technology and we recently bought a class set of personal digital assistants (Blackberry) for the school. I was doing activities with them and even had relay races with transferring data. I said that every student should have a PDA and use it every day. It is important that we keep up with the times and prepare kids for the future. This was long before the cell phone battles but I was an advocate for tech. The students sat there in stunned silence and the principal had a smirk on his face. I knew I was ahead of the curve on technology so I always was passionate about my convictions. Finally, a kid raised his hand to ask a question but I was not interested until I had said my peace and wasn’t backing down for anyone. I then turned to the students and said, now what is your question? He sheepishly asked me if I had a PDA at school every day and I said yes and especially if I was stuck trying to remember something. He then asked if I knew what a PDA was. Now I was frustrated and whipped out the one in my pocket and said yes, just like this one. He was afraid to say the next line but he told me he was asking about Public Displays of Affection or PDAs. I considered hiding under my desk but I was brave and took the heat and the one laughing the hardest was the principal. We never spoke of it again but he did chuckle every time he looked at me from then on.