Woman Confronts Teacher After Her Son's Phone Is Confiscated At School & Tracked To The Educator's Home
There are policies and procedures in place for a reason.
Drazen Zigic / Shutterstock Most parents want their children to show up to school with the utmost respect and ready to learn. Teaching is hard enough without educators having to deal with kids that are disruptive or disrespectful. But one mother believes that her son’s teacher took things way too far when she caught him with a phone in class.
The teacher took the child's phone, which was then tracked by the boy's mother to the teacher's home.
In a video uploaded to TikTok by an account called “3livelovelife,” a woman tracked her son’s missing iPhone to his teacher’s house, and an intense argument ensued about whether the teacher had a right to take the boy’s property and if she should hand it over.
The concerned mother tracked the phone to the young teacher named Mrs. Green’s house and knocked on the door, intending to retrieve it. The teacher responded by saying, “Your son is always on his phone in class,” to which the mother responded, “But why is his phone at your house?”
Ms. Green told the mother that where the phone was taken “isn’t important.” What mattered to her, she said, was that the boy had allegedly used the cell phone repeatedly when he should not have.
Nevertheless, his frustrated mother voiced her disapproval of how the teacher handled the situation, believing she had no right to take the phone home with her.
The women spent several minutes debating the merits of the teacher’s actions.
The educator continued to try to impress upon the boy’s mother how “disrespectful” he had been in class, while the mom insisted that even if he was, his teacher had no right to take his property home, leaving them at a standstill. Yet, they continued to go back and forth, each refusing to back down.
The irritated mother even accused Ms. Green of “grand theft” and threatened to report her to the police, the principal, and the school board. The video ended with the teacher defiantly refusing to hand over the device and the mother’s foot wedged in the doorway holding it open, so the conflict spilled over into a second video.
The second video was more of the same, with Ms. Green insisting the phone be picked up from the school the next day, while the stunned mom offered that it should never have left the school in the first place.
The parent tried to shame the teacher for acting inappropriately while the teacher said she was a good educator and seemed unbothered by the theft accusations and threats that she might lose her job. There seemed to be no resolution in sight and the video ended with the two embattled women still arguing.
The mom's videos had many people divided on who was right and who was wrong in the situation.
Some people thought the young teacher was on the fast track to unemployment, while others thought the mother was enabling bad behavior from her son. Others weighed in on why a child would need to have a phone in school and use it during class.
Still, confiscating a phone in the classroom is usually resolved with a stern warning from the teacher, followed by giving back the item confiscated at the end of the school day, and not taking the child's property home.
Whether or not the mother was wrong depends on if she had previously been made aware of the use of the cell phone in class. There should definitely have been some discussion before the teacher decided to take the phone off school grounds.
That would have avoided a situation where she might be disciplined for her actions and where the child may have to be moved to another class because there is now bad blood between his mother and teacher.
Perhaps the situation could have been handled differently, with the mother reporting the teacher to the principal instead of showing up at the woman's home. In the end, it certainly pays off to teach kids that phones shouldn't be used in school unless absolutely necessary.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington, and author of seven books. She covers lifestyle and entertainment and news, as well as navigating the workplace and social issues.