Administrators, You’ve GOT to Help Us With This ONE Thing Next Year

Dear colleagues,

Since I'm a classroom teacher with exactly zero days of administrative experience, I typically don't write articles aimed at building leaders. But today is a special day because I'm going to do that.

Administrators, if you don't have a locked-in, 95%-consistent cell phone policy that lives and breathes and happens each day in your school, this summer your teachers and your students need you to lead the charge on a policy for making this happen.

Rationale for this being the ONE thing

Unlike the latest buzzy trial headlines taking up our newsfeeds, the verdict has been in for a while on this matter of cell phones and secondary students.

• Their presence diminishes the precious resource of cognitive capacity, making the already hard work of learning literally impossible for distracted learners.
• When a student in the classroom is sneaking phone use, it harms not just their attention and motivation but also that of nearby learners. (This is called attention contagion, and our colleague Blake Harvard has written about a study on it here.)
• Learning Algebra II or World History or how to pop-up debate is never going to be as interesting as an algorithmically precise social media feed.
• “An OECD study found that most students got distracted when peers used phones in class. It also showed that kids who spent less in-school time on their phones got better test scores” (from this article).
• “Another study by the National Institutes of Health suggested that phoneless kids in class felt like they had a better grasp of the material and experienced less anxiety” (from this article).
• “Girls’ mental health improved markedly, and grades went up when phones were banned in school in a recent Norwegian Institute of Public Health analysis” (from this article).
• Phones have contributed to a decline in PISA scores.

Blah blah BLAH.

And let's throw in a bah humbug, too.

I'm literally exhausted rehashing things that have been so obvious to anyone who has observed the impact of cell phones on classroom learning, school culture, and student well-being.

Unfortunately, most of the readers of this blog don't live in Norway, where the national department of ed instituted a nationwide cell phone policy this school year. (A study of the impact of this ban is highly promising and will surprise exactly zero educators.)

And that's why, dear administrators, we need you to step up.

What's the simplest and most affordable thing administrators can do?

So here's the thing: most schools in the United States do have student cell phone restrictions. The problem is, most of these policies don't impact actual classrooms. This is where intelligent and consistent leadership around cell phone garages comes in.

Here is what we teachers need all of our leaders to do:

• This summer, admin teams need to all get on the same page about what will and won't fly for cell phone use in the 24-25 school year. My recommendation? Require that students put their cell phones in a phone garage when they walk into each of their classrooms. This avoids the logistical hurdles of collecting phones when students come to school each day and takes care of parent concerns regarding being able to stay in touch with their children throughout the day (which, don't get me started with the potential over-attachment problems I think that can cause for adolescent students).
• As Back to School approaches, start communicating the expectation and its rationale to all stakeholders: students, parents, teachers. This isn't going to be an optional thing, it won't be teacher-by-teacher — it'll be a school thing.
  • As principal Todd Simmons explained in our interview on the topic, the “why” he kept communicating to families was this:
    • We want your child to engage with learning rather than being tempted to “multitask.”
    • We want your child to socialize rather than ignore the person in front of them in favor of the screen in their hand.
    • We want your child to be safe from cyberbullying.
• At your back-to-school open houses and orientations, communicate the expectation and its rationales to parents and students. Show them exactly what the cell phone flow will look like. Be clear and concise. Share the phone number of the main office 100x so folks know there IS, in fact, a way to contact their child in case of emergency. Remind them that we all agree that we want them to be able to contact their child should they have an emergency message they need to get to them. But also remind them that this policy is built on the idea that we all want them to do two things while at school each day: learn to the best of their ability and be well.
• At your back-to-school PD, budget 30 minutes to walk teachers through how the process can work. Get some of your master teachers with experience or intelligence to share out exactly how they plan to introduce the garages, how they'll assign garage slots to each class member, what to do for students who don't have cell phones (lucky dogs), what to do when students disregard the policy, how to avoid power struggles — all the potential problems that come with a system like this and how to simply solve these problems as they come up. And yes — simply. Because, when everyone in the school is doing the same thing and when administration is leading the charge consistently on this issue, these problems are simple.
• As the year kicks off, use your announcements and other communications to remind students again and again what the expectation is and why that expectation exists. Speak in language that students will appreciate, such as, “We want to give you a break from your phone. We want to protect your right to distraction-free learning. We want to help you achieve your goals for this year and build toward your goals for your life.”
• And as August shifts to September shifts to October shifts to February, you as an administrator keep leading the charge. Send photos of full garages to the staff Remind group. Invite teachers who are succeeding (that is, enforcing the garages with minimal stress) to share tips and takeaways at your staff meetings. Push in when you consistently find empty garages in the rooms of certain teachers. This isn't an optional thing or something you leave up to professional discretion — this is like hand-washing for doctors.

Rinse and repeat these moves all year long, and you will find that a problem that used to riddle your school evaporates like a cold morning dew. There'll still be problems, but they won't be pervasive. You'll still need tune-ups, but you won't need a new engine.

And then you can start helping us teachers to focus on the work of pedagogy and planning and craft that actually matters and is actually our job.

Need more help?

I recently interviewed two administrators who helped their schools achieve just what I've described during the 23-24 school year. You can find that interview below:

This type of leadership is NOT the job of your teachers, dear administrators — it is a part of your job as leaders. We need you to help us do “what's best for kids.”

Thanks,

DSJR