More than half of the students were using cellphones in some of Angela Pan’s classes last year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. “We were going extremely slow,” said Pan, a 10th grader. “The instructions would have to be repeated a bunch of times.”
Most of the class was taken up by reminders to put away phones, Pan said.
This year, the school has a policy aimed at minimizing phone use during class. Beginning Tuesday, CRLS students were expected to store their devices in a designated location during teaching hours.
“This expectation is designed to prioritize the academic environment and minimize distractions,” interim superintendent David Murphy wrote in an email to the school community. “Focusing on lessons without distractions will enhance learning, student engagement and achievement.”
Phones are collected at the beginning of each class and distributed at the end, as students are permitted to use mobiles between classes and during lunch. In most cases, this means that students put their phones in individual zip-close bags at the start of each class. These are then stored, for now, in cardboard boxes.
The school originally planned to keep phones in metal lockers, principal Damon Smith said, but the Cambridge Public Schools district isn’t able to order directly from Amazon and the manufacturer wasn’t willing to sell through any other source. Instead, CRLS has ordered opaque plastic containers expected to arrive soon.
“I feel like having phone pockets where you can actually see your phone would be better,” senior Abigail Saintclair said. “For me, I liked having my phone for safety concerns. I liked knowing that if something happened to me, I could contact my parents right away.”
Complicatons for teachers too
Smith knew there would be students who struggled to follow the policy, or who would prefer to keep their phones by their side. He planned to provide these students with Yondr packs – pouches that lock up student phones magnetically for an entire day. The vendor was able to sell the packs only in large quantities, though, which Smith said would be unnecessary and too costly, considering the pouches would be used by a small number of students.
“That doesn’t bother me,” media teacher Angelica Brisk said. “That’s the administration’s challenge of having to change plans.” What does bother her is the lack of exceptions: She had a lesson plan that involved students using their phones for an animation studio. She spent the summer applying for grants to buy iPads instead.
Others worry the policy may be ineffective. “I easily get distracted with my phone by my side,” said a student who preferred to be anonymous, but added that now they’ll just “be more inclined to use my Chromebook and play games on my Chromebook.”
Despite intensive efforts by school administration, the school-supplied Chromebooks are equipped with hundreds of games that are accessible easily as long as one searches for “unblocked” versions.
Mixed signals
Addison Rosenblum, a 12th grader at the school, believes that taking away cellphones isn’t going to change things for students who were already disconnected. “I don’t think taking away the phone is gonna make them listen to, like, a biology lesson,” he said. “They’re still gonna be zoned off doing something else.”
Brisk felt differently. Despite the initial logistics issues, “I did find yesterday that it was a lot easier to have one conversation or small group conversations without people checking out,” she said. Joshua Bartholomew, a science teacher, agreed that “it seems like kids are more engaged.”
“It forces you to pay more attention in class,” senior Rayana Mohamed Farah said. “I’m listening more.”
A stronger
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Better ten years late than never! Now do the middle schools!
Cambridge is a science town, let’s do the experiment. Randomly divide the school into students who May or who May Not use cell phones in class. In 5 years we’ll compare the SAT scores of the two groups. In 20 years we can compare the group’s salaries. I’m guessing that most of the phone users are going to be calling the non-users Boss by then.
This is long over due. Beyond in school cell use CRLS still does not require attendance. Its is expressly prohibited to use attendance as a grading measure. ( pro-ported as an equity measure) Students are allowed to miss significant amount of in class time and be considered present. Many parents sell patrol their students phone and internet use and over all whereabouts. Those parents that are not vigilant or fall victim to crafty teens ( like I was) have an even harder challenge because the new CRLS mantra is we treat students like adults. This seems to allow the admin to shirk their responsibility to engage and communicate with parents since its about transitioning to adulthood. I heard interim supt Murphy regurgitate this last week at the MBK event. As a coach of 10-16 year olds I treat parent engagement no differently for 10 or 16. In fact, I worry more about what a 16 year old may get into. If CRLS really wants to walk the walk of treating students like adults then hold them accountable AND make parents partners. Murphy did talk about integrated technology programming. Maybe kids paying attention and showing up if we rebuilt or technology program with not only more space for trades but also more offerings in entrepreneurship and other new business opportunities. The last supt once again talked and studied technology education but nothing happened. As for Murphys idea to “ integrate “ tech programs yeh thats right but we first need a state of the art technology and entrepreneurial program to integrate. Maybe the old Longfellow school can be converted after swing space is not needed. When ever we add space for tech at CRLS it gets eaten up for other priorities like the parent information center and school committee meeting room did. Sorry for the cross topics!
Perhaps, if the phones were put away and students concentrated on their subjects, they might learn to write a proper English sentence.
Here is the headline from yesterday’s City of Cambridge Daily Update & Information.
“Rodent Control Program Offers Free Service to Residential Properties of Four or Less Units”
There were several people in the city government who looked at this before it went out. Not one knew it was incorrect. That’s our Cambridge.
Really sad.
Concerned, I was a copy editor for many years and that’s a copy editor issue, much as the mis-use of “over” for “more than.” Even though it would be great if copy editors could find more employment in city government (or more employment anywhere, frankly), I wouldn’t want my tax dollars going toward that expense. The rodent control program actually sounds pretty good (unless participants will be asked to remove their composting bins for lawn and vegetable garden waste, then it’s not so good). So let’s not miss the forest for the trees on this issue. (And this is coming from a tree person.) The forest at issue here is the ubiquitousness of cell phones and how steps are being taken, at long last, for CRLS students to learn how setting boundaries for the things that distract them could actually improve their learning and their social lives. Hurray for that.