Cell Phone Bans in Schools

We are removing cell phones from secondary students in the 2024-2025 school year. From my observations and feedback from teachers and students, they are a distraction to learning. We noticed especially for middle school students and early high school, they are on their devices too much. In our communication with parents they were overwhelmingly in favor of the initiative. We contemplated using Yondr Pouches so we did not have to collect them and store them daily. We decided not to use them due to the cost and reports of hacking them, and we’ll see how it goes with just taking them away in homeroom and giving them back at the end of the school day. Our school is small enough for us to do this. Our pilot went well in June, and we’ll continue to tweak our procedures. One key is being consistent when students are found with cell phones during school hours.

I continue to read with interest about the impact of cell phones on education. This Edutopia article, “Three Schools, Three Principals, Three Cell Phone Bans”. US public schools have bigger challenges with hundreds and thousands of students. As the principals in the article said, teachers still need engaging lessons to capture students’ attention.