WOODBURY — The cell phone policy at Nonnewaug High School has been changed but not for the best.
The cell phone rule last year was to put phones in the classroom pockets or just have them away and not be seen. This was definitely not the best option. Some teachers would make kids put their phones in the pockets, while others wouldn’t care as long as a student wasn’t caught on it in class. This made students have strong feelings about the teachers who did enforce these rules.
The new cell phone policy makes students put their phones up at the start of the class, and starting in the second semester, teachers use the pockets with the assigned numbers to take attendance. This does not make sense and brings up a lot of issues. There are students who don’t have phones at school, so what is the plan for them?
“Students who don’t have a phone get a pass from us, and we have a list that we share with staff,” said Nonnewaug principal Mykal Kuslis. “So if a kid says, ‘Hey, I don’t have a phone,’ teachers can always go to that list and double check it as well, and they get the note card to put in the phone holder that takes the place of the phone.”
This note card has to be a bit embarrassing for kids to have to go up in front of the whole class to put a note card into the pockets where their phones are supposed to go. I think there should be a way that students don’t have to go to this extent.
Cell phones are definitely a distraction for everyone, especially teens and young adults. This is a very common thing that many struggle with. I completely understand this part and there must be ways to keep kids from being on them without hurting the kids without phones.
Teachers do find this way to work better than the others.
“I like [how] the new way works,” said science teacher Shelly Stone. “I had a group that said they didn’t have their phones and now they are putting phones up and I feel some students were lying. This is better so I don’t have to keep asking. They put them up to not be absent.”
Some of us students do forget to put our phones up. It is a habit to just put in our pocket or in our backpacks. Some teachers don’t understand that we are human and forget to put them up and that not all students want to sit on our phones in class just to fail.
Students will still find their ways around this plan, whether they put a fake phone up there or use other ways to get in contact with friends.
“[Students have] since moved to Google Docs or emails to coordinate when to go to the bathroom,” says Kuslis.
If students find their way to go to the bathroom at the same time, they will definitely find other ways to get around the phone policy.
If a student tells the teacher they do not have a phone and doesn’t put one in the pocket, the teacher has a option to mark a student “no phone/absent,” meaning they have told the teacher they don’t have a phone and if any teacher sees them in the hall on their phone, they can see if they lied to their teacher and the student would get in more trouble.
There are many other ways our administration has thought about using if the new phone attendance policy isn’t working. Some of those include Yondr pouches, which would lock the phone in a little pouch all day and the student will not be able to use it all day.
Yondr pouches would not be a good idea because then students would never be able to contact someone in case of an emergency. Also, those locking pouches are a lot of technology to get for every student and there is no way to make sure a student puts their actual phone in there.
“I think our high school kids can manage it,” said Kuslis. “I would rather not spend the money and go through that process.”
So in order for us to stay away from these dreadful pouches that keep our phones away all day, there has to be another way around it that will keep all students in line.
I think that one possible solution would be to have the phone being put up as a participation grade. This would keep the attendance record from being affected and overall make attendance easier for teachers instead of having to ask students about what number their phone is in, which takes away from class time. Teachers could just give kids a grade on if their phones were up there or not.
Yondr pouches could be in effect for kids who don’t want to abide by the rules of putting their phone up in each classroom. If a student can’t handle the task of having their phones on them in between classes and going to class and putting them up, then they should have to use the Yondr pouches. There is no reason all students should suffer with their phones locked away all day because their fellow students can control themselves.
This is the opinion of Elsie Crocco, a junior reporter for the Chief Advocate.
