Checking Instagram, laughing at TikToks, and endlessly scrolling through text messages have been the norm in the hallways of Stone Bridge over the past couple of years. However, the school administration team has recently implemented a new phone policy for the school year by incorporating a prevention process and pronouncing all classrooms “red zones.”
In the past several years, the rise of cell phones and the advancements in their capabilities has brought about challenges for educators. Teachers find themselves at a stalemate with parents, students, and administrators, who all find the proper handling of phones to be a bit unclear.
“Teachers have not been happy with the way phones have been treated in the past,” French teacher Natasha Ludwig-Page said.
Once the administration learned of teachers’ growing frustration, the new mandate was implemented in hopes of preventing cheating and creating a more focused class environment.
“We heard that it was hard to get students’ attention because they were constantly on their phones,” Activities and Engagement Coordinator Jennifer Steeprow said. “We honestly just listened to what the teachers said, and we were like, this is what we need to have happen.”
The new three-step prevention process states that the first time a student is seen with their phone, they’re given a warning. The second time their phone is out, the student’s parent is called. Lastly, on the third time, administration gets involved. Many students were frustrated by the new phone policy and refused to follow the practices.
“Many people in my grade just straight up don’t follow the practices, and the teachers are lenient enough that the people don’t get punished for using their phones,” junior Calvin Johnson said. “I think that if the punishments were possibly enforced better, it would have more effectiveness.”
The new phone policy initiated by the SBHS administration appears to be in its early stages of implementation, however students are still up in arms because they are worried it will take away their ability to make their own decisions.
“I think it’s stupid because I should be able to choose if I want to focus or not, and if I fail that’s my own fault,” sophomore Mary Esther Vaughan said. “If I don’t have my phone, I’ll be focused on what’s going on, on my phone.”
Vaughan’s touch of irony says a lot about teenageer’s attention spans, though what she says first is even more telling. High school has always been a time to learn moderation; if a student fails, at least they have a safety net with empathetic teachers and parents to fall back upon. Many students illustrated their anxieties about how the phone policy won’t help them prepare for college.
“College is going to be a completely different experience from high school in general, and I don’t think not being able to use your phone is really going to change much,” senior Jobe Bognar said.
If a student goes on their phone and fails their classes, then at least they will learn a lesson and face the consequences while the repercussions are still small. As Bognar states, once students move on to college, this new phone policy might not make much of an impact on a person’s behavior or time management skills. However, this isn’t always the case.
“I think as teenagers [students] need more guidance,” Ms. Ludwig-Page said. “And [they] earn that freedom as [they] get older. Teenagers have shown us as a whole that they can’t handle the distraction on their own at this point. So we’re trying to show them that they are capable of not being attached to the phone 24/7.”
Regardless of how the new phone policy is viewed and whether or not it benefits the majority of students or degrades them, one thing is for sure: the new phone policy will have an undeniably large impact on the way Stone Bridge functions.
