Eagle Era

Teacher responsibilities clash with student privacy concerns in debates around a new monitoring tool

By Aruna Harpalani

Co-Editor-in-Chief

As technology use and its associated distractions have increased across AHS classrooms, so have efforts to monitor it. The newest development is GoGuardian, a new Google Chrome extension installed on student GAFE accounts. GoGuardian allows teachers to view students’ activity on school accounts, monitor their tabs, and restrict online activity to specific websites during sessions known as Scenes. Teachers were notified of its installation via email on the last day of the 2024-25 school year, and it has started entering some AHS classrooms in the past few months.

Mrs. Martin, an English 12AP and English 9 Honors teacher, has used the tool as she considers it necessary to require students to stay on-task. “I want students to maximize the time they have in the classroom. Most of my students are incredibly busy. They are doing sports. They are doing extracurriculars. They are working jobs,” she said. “They also self-report not sleeping very much and having too much on their plate. So to me, it seems ridiculous that you would squander that time.”

ELD 3 and English 11AP teacher Mrs. Smith saw her classroom become more productive after starting to monitor students. She said, “Initially, I was closing a lot of tabs, and after about a month and a half of using it in my EL classes, I’m not having to close those tabs. They just know that I can potentially look at their screen, and that’s making them more focused.”

Madison Ho (10) has mixed opinions on enforcing academic use of class time with GoGuardian. She said, “What if you’re tired, you’re stressed, and you just want to open Cool Math Games for 5 minutes to take a break? And suddenly a teacher is wagging their finger in front of you.” But she only condones short breaks, not chronic off-task behavior or dishonesty. “If you’re on ChatGPT trying to finish up your history homework, I don’t know if I can approve that,” she said.

The screen that shows up on GoGuardian when a student tries to access a site blocked by a teacher’s Scene—a dedicated session that restricts access to some websites (Photo Credit: Aruna Harpalani (12)).

Some students firmly believe GoGuardian is an overreach. “The fact that it can see your whole screen is an invasion of privacy,” said Sage Gebrekidan (12). “I’ve heard sometimes it can work on people’s personal accounts—which is their business—and they don’t know it. I don’t think they really have a right to be looking at what I’m doing on my own personal stuff.”

Gebrekidan added, “If students goof off in your class so much that the only way they can focus is if you’re constantly staring at their screen, that reflects more upon your classroom management skills.”

Fears for student privacy reach outside of campus. Atsu Iyer (12) said, “When I was opening my laptop [at home], I updated my Chrome browser for the first time in a while, and it said that on my school account, they enable GoGuardian. So even at home, I have the little circle that says it’s being used, and it can read my data.”

Mrs. Smith sees functionality in this feature. “I understand that level of monitoring can make some students nervous, especially if they’re doing things that they shouldn’t be doing, such as the student who is ‘sick’ during an in-class assignment and can be monitored to be doing something at home that makes it seem like they’re not sick,” she said. “I think that has the potential to change students who are conveniently missing assignments by deciding they will call in sick.” She added as a reassurance, “It’s not possible for me to use GoGuardian outside of school hours.”

Assurances aside, Mrs. Martin acknowledged the friction GoGuardian causes between teachers and students, and despite her reasons for using it, she still has mixed feelings. “The biggest thing I don’t like about this type of technology is the level of distrust between the teacher and the student and the us-versus-them mentality it brings into the classroom,” she said. “I absolutely hate it.”