Yes, the teacher often has a phone. At some point they installed them in all the classrooms in many schools. It sits in the corner in my classroom. I use it to call parents. Or not. Some parents don't pick up when they recognize the school's prefix, they're so involved in supporting their offsprings' implementation.
I also have a cell phone. I was my mother's guardian. I needed to be easily contacted and rather than update the information with the doctor, assisted care facility, courts, lawyers, custodians, police, etc., etc., I had a cell phone. It wasn't on vibrate. My mother survived my guardianship, at which point it went on vibrate. I check it sometimes between classes. Or use it during lunch to check DU, which my school district banned from our laptops.
Otherwise, cell phones are also a plague among teachers and substitutes. You walk down the hall during your conference period and you see substitutes with their noses in their phones, and far too many teachers, likewise.
(At the same time, there are some nice apps for phones that relate to ways of polling students, grading bubble-form test or quiz sheets, etc. Some connect to quiz-game programs, some are like Pickrs.)
In any event, the point is that teachers =/= students. When they're legally responsible for offspring, they have a need to be in what's considered fairly easy contact with others. Or when they're responsible for implementing the buzzword-driven regimen imposed on teachers by authorities.
As for students, it distracts them and those around them. It reduces achievement on tests. It compromises test security. It facilitates cheating and active non-learning. And it coordinates troublemaking, from drug sales to coordinating attacks on other students to during stupid things like getting friends together for drinking or toking during athletics events. Fortunately, some have their brains so addled that they post their illicit behavior to social media. Lost a kid recently to alternative school because he and some friends got on a school bus during an away game, got high, and posted the video. "Hey, we're at an away game during halftime getting wasted." As though administrators and teachers don't monitor such things. Oh, and the relevance? They used their phones to take their very self-incriminating selfies.
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