In a letter to parents on Tuesday, Lincoln Southwest Principal John Matzen announced a new cellphone policy in which students will have to place their phones in a designated area before class begins.
While all high schools and middle schools at Lincoln Public Schools prohibit phone use during class, Southwest is the first to designate specific spaces schoolwide for students to stash their devices.
"It's something that has been verbalized by teachers for years as a distraction to learning," he said.
Some teachers at Southwest have used the policy for years — and to great effect, Matzen said.
"This policy is really just a natural growth from what teachers were experimenting and working with over the years, where classroom to classroom we had different policies," he said.
In most rooms, the designated area will be hanging sleeves by the door in which students can drop their phones. Matzen said students can alternatively keep their phones in their lockers — or not bring them to school at all.
Students will still be allowed to use their phones during passing periods and lunch.
The district's one-to-one Chromebook program now allows each student to have access to digital content, Matzen said, making cellphones unnecessary for learning purposes.
"We have no real instructional purpose for those cellphones, and we know most of the time they're not being used for instruction, they're being used for entertainment," he said.
It will still be up to teachers to decide if phones would be helpful for a particular lesson. Students can also ask for an exception to the rule — like in the case of a personal family situation.
Southwest is not alone in looking at creative ways to eliminate electronic distractions from the classroom.
Last year, Weeping Water Public Schools began giving Yondr pouches to each student from grades 5-12 to store their phone during the school day.
The neoprene pouches — which some artists, like Jack White, have used at concerts to eliminate phone use — operate much like the magnetic security tags found at department stores.
When students walk into the building, they place their phone in the pouch and secure it at a magnetic locking station. They get to keep the pouch all day and unlock them only when they leave.
"It's been awesome," said Superintendent Kevin Reiman. "Our kids are more engaged in the classroom. Kids talk now at lunch instead of texting and having their nose in their phone the whole lunch period."
The first couple of weeks were difficult, Reiman said.
"Kids and adults are kind of addicted to their phones."
At Tri County Public Schools, middle and high school students also have their own Yondr pouches, which run about $20 a student.
Principal Ryan Clark said teachers were "at their wits' end" about kids using phones during class.
"It's an extension of them," he said.
So last fall, Clark introduced the pouch concept. The benefits became quickly evident.
"We noticed the improvement right away," he said. "Kids were engaged socially, verbally in face-to-face conversations."
Students have found creative ways to circumvent the rule — like dummy phones — but overall, the pouches work better than students putting them in their lockers or another area, Clark said. Teachers also conduct regular "pouch checks" to ensure compliance.
Clark is fielding "a ton" of phone calls and emails from other districts about the concept.
"The mental health of our students is the biggest benefit," he said.
At LPS, each middle school and high school has a certain degree of autonomy over their specific phone-usage guidelines, said Jessie Fries, director of secondary education.
Lincoln High School's student handbook, for example, recommends students leave devices in their lockers. The respective handbooks at Lincoln East and Lincoln Northeast state phones need to be off and out of sight during class. Schools also use a red-zone/green-zone policy to demarcate specific areas where phone usage is OK.
Rules at the middle school level are generally stricter, and students for the most part are asked to keep their phones at home or in lockers.
"It's really school-dependent," Fries said. "We encourage schools to talk through the policy and practice ... and what they want to happen in their buildings."
At the elementary school level, phones are considered "nuisance items" and LPS recommends parents keep their students' devices at home.
The consequences for phone infractions include confiscation, parent notification and detention, and differ building to building as well.
Matt Larson, LPS associate superintendent of instruction, said officials are looking at how to implement consistent practices and expectations across the district.
"We've heard from teachers that they would like there to be more consistency in buildings," Larson said.
The conversation about phones is interesting to Matzen, the Southwest principal. Generations upon generations grew up without cellphones, he notes. Back in the day, a phone call to the office sufficed when a parent needed to reach their child.
But the times are a-changing.
On top of phones, the pandemic and virtual learning changed the way students "think about their engagement with the classroom," Matzen said.
"Our hope is this will help them get their focus and attention back to instruction."
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