By: Jordan Park, Sam Gruetter, & Emery Curtis

Sports, Opinion, & Graphics Editors

Recently, cell phones have become a major topic of conversation within school districts, notably their negative effect on learning, causing controversy among students, parents, and teachers nationwide. California Governor Gavin Newsom took a stance on the topic by encouraging school districts to restrict phone usage in the upcoming school year. Schools across the country have started adopting phone policies ranging from light restrictions to mandatory confiscation of cell phones and limited access throughout the school day. According to many people who support phone use in schools, prohibiting students from using their phones by taking them away may seem unnecessary and restrictive. However, opponents argue that cell phones are a significant distraction requiring limitations. The government should not employ schoolwide cell phone restrictions; instead, it should be left to each teacher’s discretion to determine their cell phone policies 

Students need to have self-control and learn how to regulate their phone usage. “I just feel like taking a student’s phone away is not teaching them any regulation, and that is a necessary skill, and it’s going to be thrust upon them as soon as they’re not in high school,” LGHS sophomore English teacher Blaine Bowman shared. He added, “There is no job or college that is going to take your phone away so you can focus or put your phone in [a] phone jail.” Aside from the occasional breach of his rules, his lenient cell phone policy has not posed an issue. Bowman trusts his students to regulate their phone usage and stay off their phones for the duration of class. He also offered an intriguing perspective, stating how the availability of the internet and the vast sources of entertainment cell phones provide make him “try a little harder to find new and innovative ways to engage [students] so they are paying attention and then to create those spaces where they can use their phone for educational purposes.” 

LGHS AP Language teacher Kristen Austin approaches the topic of phone usage differently from Bowman, detailing how her class policy thrives off the limitation of phone usage, an ability she would not have if phone usage was controlled schoolwide. Austin explains, “I think if we have them in the phone spa, and they silence them in advance, we’re going to be safe if there is an intruder. The phones are here if we need to check text messages. I taught for many years prior to the existence of phones. I went to school, and we didn’t have phones. When there was an emergency, you would have a parent call the office, and they would send somebody up to pull you out of class if you needed it, and it was never a problem.” Austin claims that cell phones can be major distractions. Schools nationwide recorded decreased student engagement, productivity, and test scores due to cell phones’ rapidly increasing usage. To combat this in her classroom, Austin instituted the phone spa. Students simply place their phones in the spa at the beginning of class and can retrieve them once the bell rings. She reports nothing but positive results. She estimates that the spa has a “90 percent success rate with my blended 11th-grade and 12th-grade creative writing elective six-period class; nobody has complained at all.” She expanded on her policy by saying she has seen a significant increase in student engagement and productivity. She went as far as to say that eliminating this distraction has created “a healthier social mindset” within her students. Junior Hanna Behnami describes her experience with Austin’s phone policy saying “ I enjoy it because it gives the class an opportunity to just put their phones down and talk to one another. I think it’s essential in the class as a means to focus, especially since we can get easily distracted. I like being able to disconnect from my phone during class.” Behnami’s appreciation of the phone policy is a testament to the fact that teachers know what is best for their class and their students, and employing general phone policies would have a negative impact on students’ learning.

The phone spa was not always a staple in Austin’s classroom but a more recent addition due to the pandemic. “I’ve taught AP now for 15 years out of my 25, and since the pandemic, the scores started to drop,” Austin revealed when explaining how the COVID-19 pandemic affected her students’ reading and literacy skills. She added, “They were always on a steady climb, and then they [dropped], and I think it absolutely has to do with [COVID-19] because it used to be when you had time… you would pick up a book. And now it’s just a TikTok scroll, and it shortens your attention span.” She mentioned that she is hopeful this year will be a turning point for AP scores. Junior Kayla Mitchell, who has had both Austin and Bowman as English teachers, juxtaposes her experiences in their respective classes saying, “I feel like both teachers are trying to teach their students a lesson in iPhone dependency in their own ways. Bowman does it by making the students practice resisting while Austin prefers to completely remove the distraction. I liked Bowman’s way because while I wasn’t supposed to go on my phone, I knew I could if I really needed to. Having the choice was nice.”

While LGHS has a wide range of phone policies that vary from teacher to teacher, it is apparent that the vast majority of them are successful in cultivating a productive classroom environment, whatever their policy may be. Although they differ in guidelines, both Bowman’s and Austin’s classrooms promote balance, focus, and continued engagement with students displaying self-control with their devices. High-performance classrooms such as these support our belief that teachers should be able to create and regulate cell phone policies as they see fit. The success of both Bowman and Austin’s opposing phone policies shows that schoolwide cell phone bans are ineffective and, instead, it should be left up to the teachers to decide how they will limit, or not, their students’ cell phones.