With nearly everyone on the planet owning a phone, the growing impact of technology has made a difference in many places, even in the school system. While technology has helped students learn in school, most of the time, phones have become a distraction to students and teachers alike.
FVHS is enacting a new cell phone policy that will allow teachers to create cubbies or baskets to hold students’ cell phones during class in order to create less distractions and more focus. Some teachers have already used this strategy in their own classrooms before the policy was brought up, even then it was a struggle for students to put their phones away for only a couple of minutes before taking them out again.
Sophomore Issac Blackmon said, “If it’s my phone, I should not have to put it up in a cubby. I should have my phone with me just in case my mom or someone else texts me so I could be able to text them back.”
There are times when students are allowed to use their phones in the classroom like creating a presentation, looking in PowerSchool, taking pictures of notes or even listening to music, but some students use their class time as an opportunity to text friends, watch videos or play games on their devices.
“From a young adult standpoint I have lots of responsibilities like how my work sends me schedules at random points of the day and to text my friends or family, especially since growing up you tend to lose those people,” said senior Sydney Clark. “But as a teenager, I think it is a great idea because phones were made to hack your brain and be addictive, so they distract us and take us away from the classroom.”
Teachers having to constantly remind students to put their phones away takes time out of their teaching schedule and can become a hindrance to other students who are trying to do their work. Many teachers are thinking of using this policy for attendance purposes in order to show that if a student has not put their phone in its respective place, then that student is absent.
Many forget that phones are used as tools to learn and communicate with others, but are also small distractions in the classroom. FVHS is enacting this policy in order to stop this growing problem.
