At Clark Central High School in Athens, Georgia, students glued to their smartphones fill the hallways and common areas. But classrooms are cell phone free zones. This is a place where students are required to learn. It’s a sacred space, and we want to make sure that students are coming to school to actually learn. When stepping into class, students must hand over their phones for each 90 minute period or have a written exception from a parent to keep it out of sight in a backpack. The change in the classroom has been huge. It has become much easier to teach. Teachers find different ways to keep phones out of sight, from hanging pouches, good morning. To carts where students plug in to get a charge during class, to envelopes used to track attendance. If you do not turn in your phone, you do not get to go anywhere. Before this new approach, teachers say cell phones were a daily battle. So I had a student watch an entire episode of Breaking Bad in my class. Um, it’s like, okay, but. But math. When the district stepped in with official guidelines at the start of last year, there were growing pains from students. Students have become more and more addicted to their cell phones. There’s a whole wide world out there that’s, you know, to them, a lot more interesting than the. The subtleties of James Baldwin’s rhetoric. It did take some adjusting, you know, from having your phone on You to not having your. Your phone on you for the whole 90 minutes of class. But, you know, you. You kinda get used to it. They understand the reason for the ban, they say, but wish for more autonomy. They can be distractions, definitely. But also I feel like there are certain times where you should be able to use them if, like, you’ve done your work, you don’t really. You’re not in a rush or nothing like that. I feel like it is okay to be on your phone. What if an emergency could happen right now? What if somebody’s text me about something important? I feel like instead of being completely against it, you should try to integrate it, not just completely shut it out. Students who resist the changes can get creative. I’ve had students try to turn in phones that don’t work. I’ve had multiple students turn in a fake phone. Their teachers say they wish they’d focus some of that creative effort into their classwork instead. I feel like I’ve been able to build more meaningful relationships because I have their attention a little bit more. With students now, better focused, teachers say they’ve seen a dramatic difference, not just in test scores, but in their classroom environment. If I had a dollar for every time, four to five years ago that I would tell a student to put the phone away. Put the phone away, I would probably be able to retire today. Having the cell phone policy has really allowed, um, teachers to get back to doing what we do best, which is actually teach instead of policing the cell phone usage.