Do phones belong in the classroom? Seattle Public Schools weighs K-8 student cell phone ban Oct 09, 2019 at 8:12 am

Now that most middle-school students have cell phones, some teachers are embracing the technology for schoolwork and to communicate with kids. Others say phones detract from learning.

Waiting for the bus outside Mercer Middle School on Beacon Hill, seventh-graders Chris Smith and Liam Pomeroy are talking to each other – not staring at their phones. Sure, they occasionally check out YouTube or Instagram during their lunch period, the friends say, but their phones mostly come in handy at school for classroom activities, like the app Kahoot! some teachers use. "It’s just like an educational game, kinda – you answer questions," Smith said. "It’s a fun way to learn, too. It’s not super-boring." Kids who don't have phones can look over a friend’s shoulder to play Kahoot!, or sometimes use a computer. Other times, Pomeroy said, phoneless kids "just sit there." Right now, Smith said, he uses his phone in several classes.

"You can check answers and stuff," Smith said, adding that it's easier for the teachers when kids have their phones in class "because they don’t have to answer all the students’ questions when they’re raising their hand.” In Seattle Public Schools, some schools leave cell phone rules up to individual teachers. Others make all students stash their phones in their lockers or backpacks — a policy known as "Away for the Day." Seattle School Board Member Rick Burke is backing a proposal to make "Away for the Day" the norm in elementary and middle schools: no phones out during school hours. "I hear from educators, and my experience myself as a parent, is that they provide more of a distraction than a benefit," Burke said. Research shows that even when someone isn’t using their phone, but has it in the same room, they perform more poorly on tasks involving memory.

Board Member Eden Mack co-wrote the proposed policy. "There's value in students having a cell phone in case of emergency, reach their parents when they're taking the buses. And I support that," Mack said. "And I also support parents choice in deciding whether or not to give them a cell phone at all," Mack said. She's concerned that teachers who ask kids to use phones in or out of class could pressure parents to buy phones and data plans they can't afford or don't want to give their children. Mack said since not all students have cell phones, it's inequitable for teachers to give schoolwork that involves phones. "If it is a school lesson that we are teaching, we need to be providing whatever medium it requires, otherwise, we are being, on its face, incredibly unfair to all students and not having equitable access," Mack said. Tracy Castro-Gill, last year's regional teacher of the year and now head of the district's new ethnic studies program, said she sees students' phones as vital in the classroom. "I can't imagine going back to a situation without smartphones in modern teaching," Castro-Gill said. "It enriches and deepens the learning on many levels." At Denny Middle School, where Castro-Gill taught social studies, she said it was impossible to guarantee in-class computer access for her students because school laptops she reserved could get diverted to standardized testing at a moment's notice. Instead, Castro-Gill said, "we relied heavily on students with smartphones," especially for group research projects. Although she estimates 95 percent of her students had smartphones, only one student per group needed a phone, "because that one person would be the researcher and share out whatever they found using their phone," Castro-Gill said. Castro-Gill and her teaching partner embedded QR codes in the readings so students could pull up videos or color images on their phones of things like stone tablets and ancient art — helpful technology in a classroom that lacked a color printer. Castro-Gill also had her students use their phones for warm-ups on Kahoot! "Like: 'Is this an opinion or a fact?' Just those skills that you need in social studies that are boring to do on a worksheet," she said. Even if her classroom had enough computers for every student, Castro-Gill said she would still harness students' smartphones in order to make her curriculum culturally responsive. "The ideology is to meet students where they are, and bring their cultural knowledge into the classroom. And cell phones are part of pop culture, which defines generation," Castro-Gill said. "So if we're not using that, we are wasting the knowledge and experience and the skills that students already have."

Parent Annika Carlsten said she wants her kids to have less time on their phones, not more, given the studies she's read and what she's seen at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, which does not have a school-wide policy barring cell phones. At a critical time for kids to learn social-emotional skills, Carlsten said, "You're letting kids hide behind their phones, not encouraging the kind of face-to-face communication that fosters a community, that encourages kids to be kind to each other, that helps kids learn how to navigate body language and facial expressions and and learn how to interact with each other socially." While many Seattle middle schools have a no-cell-phone policy, Carlsten said Robert Eagle Staff left it up to teachers. Some didn't allow phones in class. Other teachers asked kids to use their phones in order to free up classroom computers. Carlsten said some of her son's teachers also asked students to download an app to get reminders on their phones after school hours about things like homework assignment due dates. "I think that overall it is really troublesome, and sends really mixed messages about why the school environment is encouraging the use of something that lots of research says is unhealthy at this age," Carlsten said.

For other families, though, having a cell phone at school does feel like the healthy choice. One mom, who asked to stay anonymous to protect her family’s privacy, said her daughter’s undiagnosed dyslexia made her want to stay home a lot in middle school. "One of the things that got her back there was knowing that she had a phone, and could make it through as much of the day as she felt comfortable with, and then could contact me right away, or just to check in when she needed it,” the mom said. School cell phone policies typically allow for exceptions for students with disabilities or who need phones for mental or physical health reasons. But some parents say they don't want their children's disabilities to be made obvious when they are the only ones with cell phones out in class. This mother said that she didn’t want to have to appeal to the school for an exception.