Is It Even Possible for Schools to Effectively Ban Cell Phones? Yes.

Is it even possible for schools to ban cell phones?

A number of people seem to think it's not.

I've been surprised at how many people have expressed skepticism that it is even possible for schools to ban cell phones.

The Washington Post has a great profile today of a middle school that has successfully banned cell phones after years of like officially having a policy that cell phones weren't allowed, but then leaving.

individual teachers on their own to enforce it.

Like that does not work.

Saying it's up to each individual teacher to enforce the cell phone ban does not work because at some point you're gonna have to have someone have your back as a teacher.

So this idea that it can just be an individual thing.

Somebody even said, if you're a good teacher, you don't need anybody to have your back.

You don't need a policy.

You can just ban cell phones on your own.

That's not really true because what you're essentially committing to there, if you are the ultimate bad guy and nobody is backing you up, you're committed to having like a permanent fight with most of your students about the cell phone.

So this has to be a policy.

This has to be a school level policy.

I love what New Zealand did yesterday.

You saw in my video, the whole country has now banned cell phones.

And I know we're a different country in the United States.

We don't have that same federal kind of jurisdiction.

But I think as a profession, we've just got to say this can be done and this needs to be done.

And one thing that you'll see in this Washington Post article that this middle school did is they implemented the yonder pouches that lock phones up in a pouch.

So the student still has their phone all day, but it's locked in a pouch with a magnet.

and only staff members can unlock it.

I at first thought that thing that kind of thing was kind of silly because you know like you could just have a policy and enforce it well but there seems to be something about the pouch that really helps kids get the idea and helps families understand it and helps them see the value and commit to it and yes there are still ways to defeat it with like scissors or you can buy the magnet yourself or you can put a fake phone in it.

But it seems to really help the idea sink into the school.

So I really have to hand it to the Yonder team and congratulate them for convincing a skeptic and for figuring out how to help thousands of schools make this switch.

So if you don't believe that it's possible, just look at the thousands of schools that have done it.

Read this Washington Post article.

And if your school has not already banned phones completely during the school day, or if there's a policy but it's not being enforced, push for it.

It will make a huge difference.

Nobody has ever told me We banned phones and then we hated it so we went back.

It's always been the opposite.

We banned phones and it was the best thing ever and we can't believe that it took us this long.

Give it a try.

Let me know what you think.