LOL! This thread is charming
When Tamagotchis were hip the first time, I was in grade 9. I had a knock-off Nano Baby (which hasn't aged well- I left the battery in, it leaked, and ruined the device) and my teacher never tried to take it off me or anything. We must have been attending one of the only schools in North America that didn't pull that stunt on its students.
When the Connection/Connexion models came out, I was between my first and second year of college for my museum studies course. I ordered one of the v1 Connexion models from eBay- those European ones, it didn't have a pause feature that first version! I ran it for about 14 generations straight (again, without a pause feature, or even a reset!) from late July to sometime in the first semester. Interestingly, my college friends (many of whom are more grown up than me, even) LOLed really hard when I came back to school with it, and got the American models for themselves, and we all played Tamagotchi together for all of second year. My little friends list was jam packed! Our tamas mated with each other! We were excited to be discovering things together and sending each other gifts! Our professors thought we were lunatics and I remember telling the chap who's now head of the department all about how mine had been running so long without a pause or reset and whatnot, and retrospectively, it's amazing he let me graduate after that conversation
In our third and final year, our conservation professor put down her foot and told us we couldn't bring them into the lab. Like you lot, we did anyway, and employed the 'play under the desk' technique and whatnot.