A student walks into class with her cellphone in hand. Today was a really important lecture, and as the teacher walked up to begin, she mentioned to students to put their phones either in their bags or in their pockets. Nobody does, including the girl, and nearly every student sits on their phone completely distracted for the entire class. She briefly thinks about the test in a couple of days, glances at the writing on the board and then sends out a snap complaining about how boring this class is.
At the beginning of the year, everybody would put their phones in their numbered pockets until the bell rang. Now it’s rare for a teacher to enforce the rules and even more rare for students to actually follow them. Has the phone policy even been effective?
The school phone policy at MCHS is built on red zones and green zones. Red zones include classrooms, bathrooms, locker rooms, school assemblies and anywhere else with a red zone sign. In red zones, phones are an absolute NO at all times unless stated otherwise. Green zones, which include hallways and the cafeteria, allow phones to be in use.
Many students complain about the phone policies. It’s understandably frustrating to have a device students are deeply attached to taken away from them. However, some teachers see it as a beneficial rule — those teachers are the only ones who still really enforce the policy.
Chemistry teacher Cassandra Myroth is one of the few who still strictly enforces phone pockets. She said that while her students do often complain about the pockets, they’ve also admitted to them potentially even helping them.
“Some of my students have even told me that they get a lot more done in my class than they do in other classes because they’re not distracted,” says Myroth.
Myroth is one of the last standing supporters of this rule. The majority of her coworkers tried to make students abide at the beginning of the year, but gave up soon after. English teacher Margaret Carhart expressed some of her opinions on the school phone policy.
“When I started the year my students put their phones in the phone pockets,” Carhart says. “As long as I didn’t see it, it was absolutely no problem.”
Carhart left her classroom for five weeks during the first semester after a knee surgery. When she came back, she found phones everywhere due to the substitute being unable to enforce the phone rules. Since then, it has been a constant fight to keep phones and earbuds away during her classes.
“Since there were only a few weeks left in the semester, I didn’t pull it back,” Carhart says. “Then I started the second semester with every day, every period, saying ear buds out and phones away. But every day, every period, someone would break the rule.”
Carhart expresses frustration regarding the usage of cellphones in class. They take away from participation and engagement and are a distraction in her teaching. She says that next year, she will be much more strict with her policies.
Adventure Ed teacher Jacob Guardalabene has also expressed certain feelings regarding the phone policy. The majority of his students bring their phones to class everyday, even when it isn’t necessary.
“What happened is I was pretty strict,” Guardalabene says. “Then I kind of let it go a little bit, and then it got out of control, and nobody would not bring their phones to class.”
While phones haven’t impacted his class as severely as others, Guardalabene still says he plans to do things differently next year. He plans to be more strict and to enforce the red zone policies like he did at the beginning of this school year.
Cellphones in classrooms have been an issue for years, with these recent ones being some of the worst. They take attention away from the teacher, impact engagement and participation, and are extreme distractions in a learning setting.
Many teachers have expressed how they wish they had been more strict throughout the year. A new common goal has been created to be much harsher next year regarding the policies. They hope to reduce the negative impact caused by cellphones in classrooms.
“Now, there’s a battle about hiding phones, sneaking phones, cheating with phones. Phones have caused animosity in the classroom,” Carhart says. “It’s not what a school is supposed to be.”
Phones have caused countless disruptions throughout several classrooms. The phone policies were made with the intent to solve this, however, they proved to be ineffective. In future years, MCHS aims to be much more authoritative with the rules. Hopefully, this will help fix an issue that almost every teacher seems to deal with.
And suddenly, it was the day after the test. The student sat in her seat, texting away, as the paper was handed back to her. It read 21/32, a D — she knew this was going to tank her grade and she couldn’t do corrections. While the teacher was going over the questions, she posted a photo complaining about how the teacher doesn’t teach and that this class sucks.
It’s ironic, because if she had put the phone away and paid attention, or the teacher was more strict with his rules, there might not be a D in the gradebook in the first place. Yet the teacher keeps teaching and the student keeps texting — would following the phone policy have helped?