After the COVID pandemic, Christine Jacquart had her “worst year of teaching.” Jacquart, who had taught French and Spanish at Shorewood High School for two decades, returned from online learning in 2021 to find that instead of correcting grammar or shushing chatty students, she was spending most of her energy on one thing: trying to get them off their phones.
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Jacquart says she’d had problems with phones in class since about 2010, but that it was never as bad as the past four years. One student, Jacquart remembers, was constantly hunching over, his head on his desk, so he could scroll on the phone resting on his knee.
“There was nothing I could do to get him off his phone,” she says. “That was a kid who [eventually] got a D in my class. … I felt like all those kids would have made more gains had I stepped in.”
This year, Shorewood High School cracked down. Under a new schoolwide policy, students now have to check their phones into caddies – hanging sheets full of pouches – as they walk into every classroom. Attempts to skirt the rules result in write-ups and calls to parents. (Some districts have considered more drastic measures; Mukwonago has debated allowing police to ticket phone-using students.)
The approach is one that schools nationwide are taking to combat the detrimental effect of cellphones on classroom learning. In June, Pew Research noted that 72% of high school teachers in the country say smartphone distraction is a “major problem.”
“The ultimate goal here is not about taking cellphones away from kids,” says Timothy Kenney, Shorewood’s principal. “It’s about improving student achievement.”
The policy seems to be doing just that. According to Kenney, every student who failed a class in the first quarter last year passed every one of their first-quarter classes this fall.
Jacquart implemented a caddy policy a year before the schoolwide one, an approach she and other teachers promoted to the administration. Now that it’s a consistent policy, Jacquart has already noticed benefits in her class. “I’m getting much better behavior. I’m getting more engagement, more questions,” she says. “The students are looking at each other. They’re laughing more. I don’t see the anxiety that I’ve seen before in students.”
Regina Schindel, a physics teacher, says that one of her classes is an entire unit ahead of where it was last year, due in large part to the accumulated time she’s saved not confiscating phones. “[Before] class was just a constant, ‘Put your phone away. Put your phone away. Put your phone away,’” says Spanish teacher Jay Lowery. “There’s a tangible difference now. … I’m not fighting a battle.”
Students don’t love the policy, and cooperation hasn’t been perfect. Some students bring in old “bricked” phones to drop in the caddies while they keep their real phone on them. And consistent enforcement is another issue. “I think like 80% of teachers are pretty strict about it,” says Takumi Fujiwara, a senior. “But some are not, and for a lot of students, those classes are heaven.”
But Kenney has been surprised how many have begrudgingly admitted that it’s helped with their schoolwork. “The first few weeks, I would see my phone in the caddy and just want to grab it,” says Ellie Christian, a junior. “My grades personally were a lot worse last year. I was super distracted. … I think [the policy] has really benefited me positively.”
