Student View: Cell Phones in Classrooms
Senior Naomi Sharpless discusses the problems she sees with phones in class.
I'm doing something a little different this week. Instead of sharing my own thoughts about our schools, I've asked a current Emmaus High School student to share hers. Naomi Sharpless is a rising senior and community volunteer who sings in the Chorale and is the girls captain of the EHS Fitness Team. She lives in Emmaus with her parents and younger brother.
Concerns About Cell Phones in Class
by Naomi Sharpless
Phones are everywhere and they allow us to communicate with people instantly, but in the classroom they are a problem. Phones were a really big issue in the classrooms last year. Teachers would tell us repeatedly to put our phones away, but some students wouldn’t even listen. I recall a time when one teacher asked us to put our phones away. Most listened, but one kid waited until she started teaching again to go back on his phone.
The problem is that the phones are taking away from teaching time. The teachers have to take time out of their lessons to tell students to put their phones away. Another issue is that these same kids are then asking the teacher for help on what they don’t understand. These kids aren’t paying attention in the classroom, and yet they’re taking the teachers’ time and effort to get help. The phones distract students from learning. Teachers don’t always have time to help people who work hard every day. Teachers sometimes push them aside to help the ones who are falling behind because of phone use. How is this okay? Shouldn’t those students be the ones to fail? They don’t seem to care about learning, so why are they taking up the teacher’s time?
My math teacher did one thing that made me really happy last year. He had a phone caddy on his wall, and we had to have our phones up there for the entire class. He’d ask us how we were doing, and everyone genuinely wanted to engage in social interaction. The atmosphere without the phones right next to us was different. People were more aware of others, and would ask how you were doing. I’m not a huge fan of math, but having the phones away proved to work. It made math class exciting to go to. People were more aware of others, we got through the content without any interruptions, and as a result had more free time to socialize. I really believe that our class grew closer; it felt like a family. What surprised me the most was the differences in the classroom feel/vibe. When I had my science class, where everyone had their phones, people were bored and not engaged in conversation. The social interactions with people were brief and people felt more cold and more self-absorbed.
“I’m not a huge fan of math, but having the phones aways proved to work. It made math class exciting to go to.”
I’m not saying I haven’t had bad days myself. Sometimes I want to lay around and scroll through my phone all day, but I’ve noticed what it does to me too. It makes me more irritable and agitated when I’m on it too long. I don’t want to be bothered with learning new content after I’ve just been on my phone. In that math class when everyone had to put their phones up, it felt happier. We were all going through the same thing, and I think there is community in that. We didn’t have anything to occupy us when we were done with our work, so we’d talk. We would do raffles that the teacher set up, or turn to a classmate and get to know them better. As I mentioned before, I don’t like math too much, but the atmosphere made me want to keep showing up. The phones out of our minds helped the classroom feel more engaged and alive.
When we don’t have the phones during class it seems to be a more productive, positive class.
I want to thank Naomi for her willingness to share her point of view with all of us, particularly because it breaks some stereotypes many of us have about teenagers and cell phones (or at least some stereotypes I've had!). I'll be back next week to discuss the new cell phone policy they are rolling out at the high school this coming school year. And if you know a student in East Penn who might be interested in sharing their viewpoint and experiences with an issue in our schools in this newsletter in the future, please let me know.
Thank you for sharing her perspective. She only touched the surface as unsolicited pictures create other problems, too.