This was us last week. Our school went BYOD in 2012-13 and proudly welcomes cell phones into the classroom. Last week, we changed our device policy to keeping phones and devices in lockers powered off for the school day. This was a tough pill for me to swallow. I did champion the pro-phone policy and often celebrated it. We held an orientation for our parents and even made the local news. It seemed like many others shared the sentiment that phones in the classroom could be very powerful learning tools. Our mission was to show our school community that we could transition them from toys to tools and our staff was dedicated to the mission.
Things have changed over the years. This year we had some red flags pop up. For a long time we had been on cruise control with phones. We enforced out policy and stayed consistent. Student behaviors really didn't improve and they were still seeing them as toys or sources of entertainment. During the first midterm of the second semester, we wrote more referrals for phones than we did for the whole first semester. Things were getting out of hand.
I looked into what behaviors were taking place and it only confirmed my concern that we had meandered away from the our original mission. Here is a sampling:
- Using their device without teacher permission.
- Using VPNs to bypass the school network.
- Texting their parents throughout the day.
- Constantly using them in the halls causing tardies. (They were not allowed to use them in the halls for this specific purpose.)
- Using their home screen as a way to cheat on test/quizzes.
- Social media use during the school day.
- Texting their parents even more.
These were also reasons my follow admins told me they would not be allowing phones in their school. I respect that now. When we started, this really worked for our school. As time went on, the winds of change blew and we had to adjust mid year. I have had some interesting feedback so far. Some parents are praising the change and appreciate it. Some do not. I had a student tell me the other day that he is less distracted without his phone in his pocket. That sounds promising. We definitely have written less referrals (only one in the first two weeks compared to an average of five per week the whole second semester). My problem is that a large number of students see this as a punishment to the whole school. I do not like this perception.
Our job when designing local policy is to create something that serves the issue by understanding the unique qualities of your school. The dress code change and our cell phone change are reactions to what we see as a problem or concern. We can't react to problems. We should be preventing them by always keeping the pulse as we go and staying informed by those affected by the policy. During those cruise control years, we never really revisited the device policy or broke down the data. The result is frustration and changing policy mid year to stop whatever bleeding we were experiencing.
Consider this a leadership lesson learned for me. It's okay to be forward thinking and to try and go where no man has gone before. This does require oversight and care. When we blow off the ongoing care of a policy, all we have done is check a box and say that were are done. We all know there is no finish line in schools. We will revisit the cell phone policy when handbook time comes, but for now we monitoring how things are without them. The more information we collect, the better we can improve the policy for our students and teachers. Lesson learned.
