Facing Cell Phone Distractions Head-On
When students—and teachers—aren’t distracted by cell phones, everyone can focus on learning. Here’s how one teacher came up with a system that works.
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Go to My Saved Content.“I just think positive reinforcement is important,” says Fairview High School social studies teacher Jess Quiggle. After years of battling phone use in the class, Quiggle has come up with a simple but effective system, which incentivizes students to put away their phones—and neatly cuts down on cell phone distractions.
“I’ve been teaching for 16 years, and cell phones have always been at least a little bit of an issue, just like note passing was when we were in high school. Since Covid, though, the shift has been dramatic. It’s no longer that cell phones are a privilege. Their cell phones are so attached to them that it’s like a right,” she says.
The school’s recent cell phone policy allows students to have their phones at school but prohibits them from taking their phones out during instructional time. Quiggle found, though, that students were still distracted by their devices, even when they weren’t actively in use.
This year, as students enter her classroom, they have the option to put their phones in a numbered shoe caddy (each pouch corresponds to a student). At some point during the class, she or her teaching assistant put stickers on a chart of student names, one for every kid who’s turned in their phone. Once a student has 10 stickers, they can trade those in for a homework pass. Kids can use the pass when they’ve failed to do an assignment (or have done it poorly), so that it won’t negatively affect their grade.
While participating is not mandatory, more and more students are seeing the benefits of separating themselves from their phones. ”This year is the most compliance I’ve had. I don’t have kids trying to sneak it. I don’t have kids trying to grab their phones on the way out the door to go to the bathroom. They seem so willing and eager to give it up that they don’t even think about it once they put it in.”
And while the homework passes are definitely a motivating factor, kids report other benefits as well. ”I think there are more cons than pros in terms of cell phones in schools because it distracts the kids more than it helps them,” says 10th grader Samuel, who likes Quiggle’s new system. “I think the buzzes in your pocket can really just knock you off your concentration and get you to lose your focus in class.”
To hear what other schools are doing to mitigate the challenges of cell phone distractions in the classroom, read Paige Tutt’s article for Edutopia titled “3 Schools, 3 Principals, 3 Cell Phone Bans.”