Phone policy fails, administration must consider other options
The phone policy fails to work and fulfill its initial goals for the 2022-2023 school year. Teachers ignore the phone pocket and students refuse to use it, resulting in insufficient policy.
Every so often, our school tries out new rules and regulations to see how they work and if they are a success. While some of these new rules have worked in the past, others have failed, like the dividers at the lunch tables during COVID-19 or the not-so-quiet zone in the library. There is one new rule in particular that filled Staples and all of its students’ minds and conversations earlier this year: the phone policy. I think it is safe to say that this was, indeed, a failure.
At first, many of my teachers were very strict with this policy and made us put our phones away every day in our designated phone slots. This caused me and many of my peers to feel frustrated and degraded, leading us to oftentimes argue with the idea of giving up our private property. For those few weeks and months that my teachers made me put my phone away, I can confidently say that my learning experience was not improved or positively affected in any way.
As a result of the policy having little-to-no positive effect on many students’ learning, many students yearning for their property and itching for easy access to social media and most teachers ignoring the policy, the rule was quickly forgotten. Within just a few weeks, most of my teachers stopped asking us to put our phones away and completely forgot that the phone pockets existed. In fact, in one of my classes, my teacher told us on the very first day of school that they honestly did not care if we put our phones away and agreed that the phone policy was a bit overreaching.
From the beginning, the phone policy was set up for failure as the policy did not address the underlying issue of phone usage in the classroom, but instead restricted all students completely. — Jolie Gefen ’24
Students who wanted to use their phone in class would find ways to do so, whether it be by hiding it in their bag, or grabbing their phone when the teacher was not looking. By the school simply punishing every student and attempting to take away all liberty regarding phones, less students and teachers felt compelled to abide by it.
Although it was a well-intentioned idea that could have encouraged a more focused learning environment, it was ultimately a complete and utter failure. I can speak for most of my peers when I say that we don’t want to have our phones taken away. But I can also understand the side of the administration when implementing an idea such as a phone pocket. I urge the Staples administration to evaluate other options besides a strict no-phone policy, and perhaps instead, teach students how to use their phone in responsible and respectful ways. Better luck next time, phone pocket.phone
Web Managing Editor Jolie Gefen ’24 understands what it means to manage and organize, as this past summer she worked as a camp counselor for Westport’s...
