Superintendent Dr. Shari Camhi Interviewed by EdSurge
Analog Solutions for Digital Problems
Why ‘Brain Rot’ Can Hurt Learning — and How One District Is Kicking It Out of School
Excerpt from article:
Shari Camhi, superintendent of Baldwin Union Free School District in New York, says that cell phones have never been seen as anything but a distraction in the district of about 4,500 students. They’re not allowed in any K-12 classrooms. They’re not allowed at all on elementary and middle school campuses. High schoolers can use their phones during lunch, but the devices otherwise stay in their lockers.
“That doesn't mean it's not without some difficulties. It's a constant reminder to put your cell phones away,” Camhi says. “We put up this big barrier that says, ‘No.’”
The effects of social media overconsumption trickled in despite the district’s efforts to raise a firewall and to keep students focused on their classwork. Particularly after students came back from the COVID-19 lockdown, they had lost some of their social skills and were quicker to anger.
“When you go online, whatever you're reading is probably a sentence or two or three, or maybe a paragraph long,” Camhi says. “So there's this TikTok, right? It's like 15-second videos. Everything is in these short, quick bursts. And the work that we do in school is not short, and it's not quick.”
Camhi is not a fan of the term “brain rot.” She thinks the phrase lacks the empathy that students need to strengthen the skills social media has diminished.
“That doesn't mean we're not tough on it. Anyone here will tell you I am tough. I'm a kid that grew up in the streets of Brooklyn before Brooklyn was too expensive to live in,” Camhi says. “I am not a pushover by any stretch of the imagination, but I just would not use that term because whatever our kids are going through, they need more support. They need more guidance, they need guardrails, they need direction. They don't need negativity.”
Camhi wanted to get students — and their parents — away from their phones. Last year, the district organized a family field day where kids and adults played the games that Camhi did growing up in Brooklyn, when the only way to get your friends together at the playground was to talk to them in person. The Baldwin Street Games had jump rope, hit the penny and scully shuffle.
“In the middle of it, it started to rain. No one left,” Camhi says. “The feedback was so incredibly positive because it was genuine, pure, unencumbered. The kids' reaction was, ‘Can we do this every day?’ So sometimes going back in time is not such a bad thing.”
It’s not realistic to expect that parents are going to separate children from their phones forever, Camhi says. To do that would be cutting students off from half of their social life. But the superintendent advises parents about limiting kids’ time on electronics at home.
The Baldwin school district is also teaching students not to take everything they see on social media at face value. Media literacy classes begin at sixth grade and continue through high school. Camhi says the goal is to ensure that students learn how to decipher what is real online and what is not.
“We find that success really lies in our students asking questions,” Camhi says. “Where is this coming from? Who's the author? Can I verify this? Those questions that kids ask, and their ability to think through those questions, their ability to think about whether something seems feasible, seems likely — that's all critical thinking.”
In March 2024, the district opened a wellness center in Baldwin Middle School to offer counseling and behavioral therapy for students in all grades. That includes what Camhi calls “academic wellness,” support for students who have been avoiding attending school. Another center is under construction at the district’s high school.
“We're really, really focused on that because we believe that if you are not emotionally ready, you're not going to learn,” she says, “so there's been a big push to make sure our kids are healthy.”
As Camhi describes the district’s work in supporting students, she refers often to her own childhood — one that is characterized by connection. When it comes to the activities the district aims for in its classes, educators want students to be so engrossed that they don’t even hear the bell ring, Camhi says.
When she sees students plugging their ears with AirPods and staring at their phones, she doesn’t see them connecting to the wider world — Camhi sees them filtering out the world in front of them.
“Social media is this ever-present, ever-responding, ever-posting — It doesn't go away. The ability to escape from that is really almost non-existent, and so I think in large part, one of the reasons why we're seeing this breach of social norms is because you could just never get away from that constant picking at the scab.”
- In the News