There’s a new ‘no phone’ policy at Northland Pines High School in Eagle River.
Administration, teachers, and students all say it’s helping.
Phones are addictive and distracting, regardless of how old you are.
At Northland Pines High School in Eagle River, teachers and staff report that they’ve become a big problem.
In the last three to five years, administrators say students have increased their usage by a lot.
A Pew Research study found that 72% of public high school teachers say that students being distracted by phones in their classrooms is a major problem.
This is Principal Dr. Daniel Marien.
“What we're trying to avoid is we're trying to avoid teachers being the cell phone police, if you will, because that that was exhausting, and it was a very trying thing for them to do, and it's, quite honestly, they're educational experts, and I don't want them investing their time on that,” said Dr. Marien.
Now, the high school requires cell phones, smartwatches, and earbuds to be out of sight in their locker when school begins. There’s no access to student devices during passing periods or lunch time.
Some students have permission to carry their devices because they have health concerns.
Staff have a list of those names, but otherwise, no devices.
Dr. Marien says he was expecting more pushback from the students.
“Everything you read about schools that have done this before, like the first month is kind of rough, because kids don't know how to interact, or how to live life without their phone or earbuds or whatever the case might be, but our kids were great from day one,” he said.
He thinks students adjusted well because in the middle school, they were already used to having a 'no phone' policy.
They’ve definitely confiscated some phones, but Dr. Marien says students have been telling him how much they appreciate the new policy.
“They're like, ‘that was way easier than I thought it was going to be. I really like talking to my friends, and the lunchroom is amazing right now,’” he said.
He says that students are building life skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.
A 2021 study found that smartphone addiction has an overall negative impact on students’ learning and performance.
The more a student uses their phone, the greater the impact on their learning.
Teachers say that engagement has increased in the classroom and they’ve been hearing students express clear positives of the policy to them.
Jacob Husing, a math teacher at Northland Pines Middle & High School, reflected on the policy change.
“It looks like it was probably like 20 years ago [when] I started. This is my 16th year teaching, and so at the beginning, you never had to worry about cell phones, and now you don't again. And so it's been nice to kind of hit the reset button on that,” said Husing.
Students still can use their Chromebooks, but removing phones has eliminated the distractions of social media.
“I haven't had any problems in any of my classes or even in the hallway. I've heard a few, like, kind of trickle in on a weekly basis or a daily basis. But I think it's a lot better. It's gone a lot better than I anticipated it would,” he said.
Matt Milanowski is a senior at Northland Pines High.
He said sometimes students would use their phones to watch sports or keep up with social media while in class.
“From my student perspective, I feel like school hasn't changed that much. There's been some positives too. Like, everybody's pretty engaged, and it's definitely nice for the teachers that they don't have to patrol that,” said Milanowski.
He does say he misses being able to take a picture of the board in class to remember specific problems.
Before implementing the phone policy, Dr. Marien said he had a lot of conversations with families about the change.
He addressed concerns that students wouldn’t have access to their phones in the case of an emergency, like a mass shooting.
“If you look at any of the data, any other research articles, law enforcement, anybody involved with school safety, they'll tell you that having a phone is actually going to make a bad situation worse. For one, not everything that's going to be put out in a text message to a parent is going to be accurate, because the kids don't really know what's going on at that moment,” he said.
He says their policy reduces miscommunication and allows them to enact their school district safety plans.
