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Both students and teachers are adapting to the new enforcement of DHS’ longstanding phone policy
By: Conor Sweeny, Connor Kniesteadt, Jack Deleruyelle, Vaughn Meyer & Sean Harrison
A phone on your right, a phone on your left, a phone in front of you, and a phone behind you. Phones at concerts, phones in movie theaters, phones where they’re not supposed to be. It’s an era where technology is found in every spot you can imagine.
One of those spots is in the classroom. “I’ll do everything when I get home,” junior Ben Murphy said. “I want to be on my phone now.”
The extreme usage for phones has left DHS with what seems to be no
choice but to enforce the phone policy.
So, that’s what they did. Directly prior to the 2023-2024 school year, a seemingly new phone policy was brought down onto the student body.
Or was it new? According to Melanie Nowak, “the policy was in our handbook well before I came in.”
“I would love to see every single classroom where every student is so engaged in what the class is doing, that we’re not even thinking about what’s on our cell phone” said Melanie Nowak.
The policy would attempt to prevent students from using their phones, by
trusting in the teachers to enforce the policy, and having punishments for those that use their phones. The offenses are:
1st offense: Teacher keeps it until the end of the hour.
2nd offense: Teacher gives it to the office until the end of the day, student can pick it up
3rd offense: Teacher gives it to the office, parents must pick it up
4th offense: Administrator discretion
The majority of students were not in favor of this policy; 73.5% of students in a Squall Survey voted that they were not in support of the policy. It’s not only students who aren’t in favor of the phone policy. One teacher said, “I think that the policy, to me, seems a little bit too strict. I think there should be a bit more flexibility with students towards the end of classes. When there’s a time and a place then cell phone usage, in my opinion, is appropriate.”
Although some teachers think the phone policy is too strict, most teachers
think otherwise. When Andrew Foerster was asked about the enforcement he said, “I think in a perfect world it would be like hey we can trust you guys to not be on it during school… during classwork, but clearly that was not working the past couple of years, so we have to further enforce the policy that was already implemented,” Andrew Foerster said.
As mentioned earlier, one of the main factors for the phone policy enforcement was to increase student attention in classes. Most teachers found issues with getting students to pay attention, because they were always on their phones. Some students have even said that despite not supporting the enforcement of the policy, it has helped them get their
work done. “Yeah, honestly I think I’m learning better,” said senior Andrew Guinta when asked if he benefits from the new policy. Guinta was not the only student to say his learning has improved, but his opinion was not the most common opinion for students. Senior Reed Alexander said, “No, I think it has negatively impacted it.”
Another thing that has been questioned in this phone policy is teacher enforcement. How the teachers enforce the policy, and what do the students think of how they’re enforcing it? Most students tend to say that it depends solely on the teacher you have, with most being neutral on it, and others swaying one way or the other on enforcement.
Christopher Mackinder, who teaches three different classes involving the heavy use of phones says the way he handles it is, “when I tell a kid, hey, we’re going to do this phone activity today, to take pictures, you can take out your phones, they’re not taking them out until I say that.”
Putting away enforcement alone, now that the students thoughts have been talked about, what are some of the teachers thoughts on the policy being put into place? Science Teacher, Matt Caves believes that, “the phone policy is helping to increase student engagement in classes as well as increasing our academic success of our students.” Matt Caves also
believes that hammering down on this policy will positively impact the behaviors that students are learning.
“I think we’re learning better behaviors. I think that one of the things that we oftentimes overlook is how behavior impacts success in many different ways. And what I know is that when we leave here, and go to our post secondary options, that cell phone usage will become a thing that could get in the way of you being successful in those environments. And so we need to learn how to behave and start building those good behaviors toward success,” Caves added.
Most students have followed the policy pretty well teachers believe.
“I think there’s only been like four or five [violations] so far the entire school year, which I’m suprised about,” Melanie Nowak said in early October.
Some support the policy, most don’t. What matters in the end is that Dexter is trying to improve education for students. Whether it was the right way to do it or the wrong way, the persistence of its enforcement is certainly there.
