Ariana Teasdale || STAFF WRITER
Last year, Scott Darlington, former assistant principal, received a grant to investigate cell phone usage in school. He gathered teachers to create a specific committee. In May, phone boxes were brought into classrooms.
Technology teacher Daniel Brennan was responsible for creating a video that was played before the guest speaker that appeared last year. There were four other teachers, including history teacher Ruth Masters, science teacher Seema Gupte, and math teacher Shawn Remy on the committee.
“Ms. Masters was keeping the faculty informed, Ms. Gupte was [keeping] the students [informed and] spearheading bringing the guest speaker in, and Mr. Remy worked with parent communication,” Brennan explained.
Brennan is trying harder to enforce the cell phone policy in his classes. After researching and looking at statistics, he started using the metal cell phone caddy. “I teach film and video and so we use [phones] a lot. We try to find a healthy balance, but for me, it’s class by class. As long as you’re being respectful and not distracting other people I think there are ways to make it work. If we cannot follow that, it’s tough to not use the phone caddy,” he said.
Although she has emailed, made signs, and provided boxes, Masters thinks some teachers are not enforcing it as much as they should. “Most teachers have the tools to implement the policy, but whether they’re actually doing it? I do not know,” she explained. “I still see some kids in the hallway with their phones, so that’s telling me teachers probably aren’t [enforcing the policy].”
Art teacher Emily Ross enforces the policy a bit differently: “During direct periods of instruction, the cell phone needs to be away, and I’m pretty adamant about that, but during work time, on occasion, students might need to use them.”
Ross explained how her class is a visual arts classroom, so looking at pictures for references is important; however, she does also recognize the distraction cell phones impose.“I think having stricter rules during the academic day is important because they can be a distraction to learning and it’s really hard for people to multitask,” Ross said. ‘I’m not 100 percent no-phones in school, but I think people need to learn how to use them effectively because we’ll have them for the rest of our lives.”
Junior Noor Bhatti feels a similar way. “I think a phone box could definitely help people that get distracted really easily but I think for the majority of people it’s kind of unnecessary,” she said. Bhatti says the majority of her teachers do not strictly enforce the policy. She also thinks that it’s easy to get distracted on a computer too and so using her phone does not affect her productivity as much.
Some students, however, find the phone caddy helpful. “I really have been liking the phone box system.” sophomore Anika Abbot said.“I am more focused and attentive in class. Although I do appreciate the freedom of keeping phones in our bags, I think for learning purposes the phone box is extremely beneficial.”.
