Curtis Booker, Daily Herald

Students at Pleasant Grove High School arrived on campus last month with something unfamiliar hanging up in their classrooms.

In an effort to alleviate distractions during class time, the school has implemented a new cellphone policy, prohibiting use during class.

But to ensure students aren’t scrolling on TikTok or Instagram, or checking text messages when they are supposed to be learning, each classroom has been outfitted with a cellphone holder, according to a press release from the Alpine School District.

Students are expected keep devices off or on “Do Not Disturb” and place phones in the hanging cellphone holder provided by the teacher. The phone remains there during learning time, which is generally the entire class period, the policy states. Students can retrieve their devices before heading to their next destination.

The push to separate students from their phones during class time comes after Gov. Spencer Cox sent a letter to educators earlier this year urging school leaders to enact such a policy.

Courtesy John Hanks, Principal, Pleasant Grove High School

Pleasant Grove High School Principal John Hanks said they formed a cellphone task force to explore ways of how to best ban cellphones in the classroom in a way that limits student distractions while promoting a more engaging learning experience.

“The big tipping point for us was learning that when a student is distracted by a cellphone, it takes them so much time to get reinvested and refocused on what they’re learning,” Hanks said.

Tamara Oborn, a wellness teacher, helped gather research and get feedback from the wider school community and found a number of statistics on the topic.

According to the district’s press release, some of the data revealed that it takes 8-25 minutes for the brain to refocus after a distraction and limits the ability to commit information to long-term memory, and that test scores are lower when cellphone use is allowed in the classroom.

Even with the research in hand, administrators knew acting on the policy wouldn’t be easy.

Curtis Booker, Daily Herald

“It was really scary to say we’re gonna do this and throw it out there,” Oborn said. “Because parents are scary, a little bit — not knowing how they would feel, not knowing how they would react.”

Other Utah schools already have implemented practices to crack down on cellphones in the classroom.

Utah lawmakers recently drafted a bill ahead of next year’s legislative session that, if passed, could enact a statewide cellphone ban during class time to take effect as early as the spring of 2025.

Meanwhile, administrators at Pleasant Grove High School are allowing some flexibility with their new policy.

Parents can still reach their child if needed by calling the school’s front office. But students also may communicate with their teacher in the event of an individual emergency to access their phone. Such situations will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

In the event of a schoolwide emergency like an evacuation or a drill, the policy ensures that students will have possession of their phones.

“We wanted to use some nuance and flexibility in making the decision. So we didn’t want it to become a big power struggle, or we didn’t want it to become a big source of conflict between the students and the teachers,” Hanks explained.

Hanks said the Alpine School District has been supportive of the cellphone policy and in allowing each administration the autonomy to decide how they want to address the issue at their respective school level.

District officials say while many of their other secondary schools have some variation of control over student cellphone use on campuses, Pleasant Grove High School’s ban adoption is the most firm at this time.

“Most of the schools are somewhere in the middle where they have departmentwide policies, or they leave it up to teachers to determine how they are going to integrate and allow cellphones in their classes,” Rich Stowell, director of communications for Alpine School District, told the Daily Herald. “So I think all of the secondary schools are going to be looking at Pleasant Grove this year to see how successful it is.”

Improvements for student engagement in the classroom

Being less than a month into the new school year, students and teachers are likely both still adjusting to the new guidance. But Hanks says, so far, very few students have been resistant to the classroom phone restrictions.

“Students have been very cooperative for the most part,” he said. “In most cases, we’ve been able to work with parents to find a solution that helps everybody succeed. That success has been a result of engaging teachers and parents in the process of change.”

For math teacher Annie Lavin, she’s already noticed a shift in the amount of time it takes for students to focus on their assignments.

She says in the previous school year, it could be a struggle to get students to tuck their phones away. But with the new policy, she added, there is more time spent learning and fewer distractions.

“I take a minute or two at the beginning of class. I say, ‘Hey, put your phones in the pouch, hang them up,’ and they go hang them up. And (at the end of) class, about a minute early, I say, ‘Hey, go get your phone,’ and make sure everyone has their phone before they leave,” Lavin explained. “And then for the rest of class, I don’t have to think about phones. I don’t have to worry about them. I don’t have to, like, look for them to see if they’re hiding them.”

She’s also noticed an increase in students interacting with one another. “They’re engaging with their peers, which is great. I would much rather have them do that than be glued to their TikToks,” Lavin said.

What are the students saying?

For junior Tate Tanner, he initially didn’t like the idea of having to place his phone in a pouch for the duration of class, but he acknowledged the potential positive impact on focus in class.

“Yeah, I think it’s helping me focus more. And I think I’ve noticed it with a few of my friends too,” he said.

During the previous school year, Tanner said, in some classes it was easier to become distracted and give in to the urge to pull out his phone.

“But I’ve noticed, like, after getting used to the phone policy, I don’t really, like, feel that anymore. It’s just like, I can go the whole class without looking at my or needing to look at my phone, and so I just can do whatever I need to do,” he said.

Just a couple of weeks into the new policy, Tanner says it’s become a routine for him. “I don’t really know about anybody else, but yeah, personally, it wasn’t hard to get used to it all,” he told the Daily Herald.