Phones & Safety for our Kids
Dear Creo Families,
I’m writing to you about a very important issue that’s impacting schools all over the world. The way students are interacting with each other on social media is distinctly different from the way they are interacting in person. More than 50% of the behavior issues we see in school begin outside of school, often through online interactions, and then carry over into the school day.
Our focus and priority is your child’s education, well-being, and safety. When our team has to spend significant time managing conflicts that stem from social media, group chats, or items that should not be brought to school, it takes time and attention away from our primary responsibility: building a school where every student is always safe, and never bored.
We also strongly encourage families to monitor and coach children around their interactions with peers on social media and mobile devices. Many families understandably set boundaries around what their children can access and who they can communicate with. We encourage you to go one step further by helping your child learn how to navigate these spaces.
That means teaching them how to:
Recognize when a group chat or online interaction is becoming unhealthy or inappropriate
Handle peer pressure and the pressure to participate in trends or challenges
Remove themselves from conversations that are becoming toxic
Ask an adult for help when they are unsure what to do
Understand that they do not have to participate simply because everyone else is
And, speaking from too much experience, literally nothing good comes from a group chat with 20+ middle schoolers.
We know that navigating social media and technology with middle schoolers is not easy. We are sharing a few resources that may be helpful as you have these conversations at home:
Thank you for partnering with us. When we work together to help students make healthy choices both inside and outside of school, we are able to spend more of our time doing what we all want most: helping your child learn, grow, feel known, and thrive at Creo and beyond.
Thank you for helping us be a different kind of school.
Ben SK
Founder & Head of School