A teacher's tale: 'I have seen children sending porn pictures to each other in class'

Sometimes at the extreme end, children use phones to take pictures of each other, send texts and upload web pages of adult content while in class. I have seen them sending pornographic images to each other and while the law says a teacher can now take a phone off a child, you are putting yourself at a huge amount of risk in doing this.

I have had a child say, "You're taking my property, I am going to get you done for this." I've also seen images uploaded to Facebook and YouTube of colleagues, which are less than favourable. Children set up situations with a teacher so they can take photos, which could look as if they are threatening a child. Anything that takes a teacher's attention away from the rest of the class has a negative impact on them. If I constantly say "Turn your phone off", "Take your iPhone out of your ears" or "Stop texting", I am not asking if they understand their work or whether they have any questions.

There are three issues: the way the child learns themselves, the impact of their actions on other children and the effect this has on staff if they start misusing our very sophisticated technology."