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More schools opt to ban cell phones

By Rebecca Gashinsky | Manor Ink

Town of Rockland, NY – As our world is becoming increasingly digitized, students are growing more reliant on their phones, and educators often find themselves fighting against phones for their students’ attention. In response, schools worldwide are beginning to introduce policies where students must put their smart phones into locked pouches during the school day.

With these pouch policies, students still have their phones physically, but are not able to access them until the pouch is unlocked at dismissal or in the case of an emergency. Rules pertaining to phones are no longer expected to be enforced by teachers with the policy, and would instead be handled by the school’s administration.

The pouch system

Yondr, a company that manufactures these pouches, is currently working with over 2,000 schools across the world to create phone-free spaces. Students put their phones into the Yondr pouch and it is held closed with a magnetic lock. To unlock the pouch, they just need to tap it on an unlocking base which is controlled by staff. The pouch system generally costs around $25 to $30 per student.

To learn whether the pouch policy would be beneficial or well perceived locally, Manor Ink surveyed 143 Roscoe and Livingston Manor students. Reluctant to give up their phones, 89 percent of students did not think that their school should ban phone use during the school day, and 82 percent of students did not see any benefits to a ban on phones in school.

Measures taken by Rockland schools

The current policy at Roscoe Central School and Livingston Manor Central School calls for students to place their phones in phone caddies during class. The policy is expected to be enforced by teachers, but with students so reluctant to give up their phones, the caddies often create conflict.

Carmel Lambe, a high school English teacher at Roscoe, described her experience with Roscoe’s policy. “Teachers are trained to greet students positively as they enter the classroom, but the truth is that the first thing we need to do is take students’ phones away from them,” she said. “This request often faces resistance.”

Teachers don’t want to have to fight students for their phones, and Lambe believes that the pouch policy may be beneficial, allowing her to focus on teaching instead. “I believe the cell phone policy should be enforced not by the teachers but by the school administration, and if that means collecting phones as students enter the building in the morning and placing them into sealed pouches, it might be worth trying this new approach,” she said.

Using phones for school work

Roscoe Spanish teacher Cynthia Hyzer shared a similar experience, but offered a different perspective on the pouch policy. “As a teacher, I have to decide what I’m going to use my limited class time for – teaching Spanish, or battling students for their cell phones. I choose teaching.”

But Hyzer uses phones as learning tools in her classes. For security reasons, schools usually heavily filter all school-issued devices’ access to the Internet. But along with dangerous or inappropriate websites, also block are all sites outside the United States, as well as many useful educational resources. “As a Spanish teacher, that is extremely frustrating and limiting,” Hyzer said. “So, there are many occasions when I allow students to use their personal phones to avoid this issue. On their personal devices, using their provider wifi and not the school’s, they are able to access Spanish newspapers and other online sites for class.”

For 64 percent of surveyed students, school-related work was one of the many reasons they use their phones during class time, and for a smaller percentage of students, school-related work was the only reason they used their phone during school.

Though supportive of any decision made by her school, Hyzer doesn’t believe that a pouch policy would be a reliable solution to the issue at hand. “I don’t see how this addresses the issue of students placing an old phone in the magnetic pouch and continuing to keep their actual cell phones on them throughout the day.” Other schools that have introduced pouch policies have noticed that students still manage to find such ways to avoid the policy and keep their phones.

Little student support

With many students unexcited about the idea of implementing a pouch policy, one Roscoe student expressed their concerns. “I would not be okay with it. What if there is an emergency, or something that happens and I need to contact my parent?”

Students would have to get permission to unlock their phones or have the school get in touch with their parents every time they need to contact them. Of course, prior to the advent of cell phones, students had always needed to have school authorities connect them with their parents during the school day. But the rise of emergencies like school shootings has rendered that option less than adequate.

From the Ink’s survey results, 25 percent of students answered that they use their phone during the day exclusively for personal messaging, and 64 percent say they use their phone for that purpose along with school-related work and entertainment/social media. So while the pouch policy is being introduced in many schools throughout the world, the general consensus amongst Roscoe and Livingston Manor students is that they clearly want nothing to do with it. Teachers’ opinions of the policy, on the other hand, are varied, with some seeing potential benefits and others doubting its effectiveness and need.