Teacher Tip: Managing Cell Phones in the Classroom

The evolution of the cellphone in the classroom has been quite interesting to witness. In my career, I've gone from cell phones not even being allowed in the school building to using cell phones to enhance instruction. As a result, I've also watched high school students be warped into these zombie-like beings tethered to their phones. Experience has taught me that phones aren't so much the issue as it is social media.

Our students are living for likes. And why wouldn't they? Social media is successfully designed to be addictive.

The 2020 Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, was profoundly telling in explaining this phenomenon. I can remember standing in front of my class one day, explaining the day's lesson and I stopped and said, "I'm literally teaching to the tops of your heads right now." It was like the entire class was lost in their phones. I knew I had to do something to address this in my class. I was at a loss though, because this was a battle I'd already been fighting and losing for years.

Finally, during an extensive and desperate search one summer to figure out how to get my students back and attentive in class, I found an idea I thought was worth a try in a WeAreTeachers blog. This specific cell phone jail idea was shared by a teacher, D. Hayden, who originally posted this idea on WeAreTeacher's social media page. I only had to make just a few edits to this envelope approach to make it work for me and my students. I only created about 3 or 4 envelopes, because, once I start "locking up" the first offenders in class, the rest of the cell phones start to magically disappear. There is a piece of velcro attached to the seal so that the envelope is noisy when you open it. I covered my envelopes in some packaging tape, just to make them a little bit more durable. And there you have it. I have an inexpensive solution to help me manage this addiction in class.

Here's how it works. Once I see a student distracted on their phone, I walk over and place the envelope on their desk. From there, they already know that the expectation is for their cell phone to be placed in the envelope because this is something that we've gone over on the first day of school. From there, the cell phone has to stay in the envelope for the remainder of the class period. After class, they can remove their phone and return the envelope to me. In the last few years that I have been using this strategy, I've never had a student remove their phone from the envelope. As a matter of fact, I would even go as far as to say I get this strange feeling that students are actually relieved to have a chance to breathe, learn, and be social media-free.

It does take some energy on my part to police all of the cell phone violators, but it's so worth it to me. Nothing else has worked. A lot of teachers swear by charging stations in their classrooms. I say, "Great," if that works for you. I won't use stations because I wanted my students to be able to have access to their devices for appropriate classroom use (I am a firm believer that technology can be a powerful tool for learning when used appropriately) and I'm always going to lean more towards a solution that helps them develop their self-control. I also don't want to be liable for a phone that goes missing from the charging station. Rules and consequences NEVER worked for this problem; the addiction is too strong. Students would always choose detention over turning in their phones when given the choice because I just wasn't willing to waste instruction time over that argument. Giving up that time to monitor students during detention was more of a punishment for me than it was for them.

They'd only end up sitting in detention... ON THEIR PHONES!!! Ugh! It had even gotten to the point where I'd take the student's phone just for the remainder of the period, but again, the amount of time I wasted convincing the student I was going to give it back just wasn't worth it to me. A cell phone jail that still allows the student to be in possession of their phone has worked out to be the perfect solution for my classroom. About halfway through the year, it gets to the point where all I have to do is walk around my room with the envelope in my hand while I'm teaching and the cellphones will start to disappear back to their more appropriate holding spaces.

I love this approach to tackling the issue of students being on their phones in class for several reasons. First, I'm not going to break this addiction. It took me a while to come to terms with that. To think that a rule or a request is going to ensure that students resist the urge to get a "hit" of dopamine during class is naive. That would be no different from asking any addict to simply stop doing their addiction just because it's against the rules. Second, it eliminates the inevitable arguments that occur when trying to handle cell phone issues in the classrooms the typical way. Asking students to put their phones away is pointless. It will just be right back out in 5 minutes. Taking the phone ensues a full-blown meltdown that I just found to be absolutely exhausting. Finally, the cell phone jail is a great way to discretely and quickly make my students aware of just how much they are using their cell phones during class. All I have to do is place the envelope on their desk. Most of the time I don't even have to stop teaching. Two or three consecutive days in cell phone jails seems to be just the right amount of embarrassment (not humiliation) for self-reflection. I've even had a handful of students make the decision ON THEIR OWN to turn their cell phone over to me before class even started because they recognized just how much they were controlled by their phones.

Of course, for extreme cases where students are not learning to correct the behavior day-to-day, I reach out to parents and we have a conversation about the egregiousness of the behavior. But for the most part, this cell phone jail helps me achieve everything I need to accomplish with my students when it comes to managing their cell phone use in class.