When coming back to school this year, many students have been met with a new tech policy of screens only on request being implemented in many of their classrooms. Although it may seem sudden, there has been an ongoing reason for teacher’s desire to keep screens away from students during class.
In the years following online learning, phones, computers, and earbuds made a common appearance in classrooms. Many knew of their destractive qualities, but this year teachers have learned new information on just how distracting technology can be: “If you’re interrupted once, it takes 9 to 23 minutes for you to get back to where you were”, said English teacher Jamie Donohoe.
Donohoe said that because students were constantly getting interrupted during class, in order to compensate for the time lost from the interruption, they were “constantly working harder, faster, and not as well.” Students were becoming stressed from all the catching up they had to do.
In order to fix this, at the end of last year Donohoe started implementing a tech policy that Mr. Rubey had laid out. It went smoothly for Donohoe last year, so many teachers have implemented the same tech rules this year. Donohoe said that he “saw some positive results last year and now doing it this year it seems to be really smooth,” and “when [students] are off technology, it seems like folks are paying more attention.”
Although the new restrictions were brought on to students quite suddenly, not all students have grievances about it. Sophomore Kate Griffith said that the tech policy “has been pretty helpful with the way I focus in class.”
However, for some students that have gotten used to having their phones with them during class, the screens only on request rule has been hard to adapt to. Sophomore Grace Getze said that “I think it’s difficult to not have my phone when I’m trying to take photos of something on the board, because sometimes teachers go too fast when writing.”
English teacher Tom Duffy has encountered a similar problem. In the past, Duffy would allow his students to have their phone during class in order to take a photo of their work to submit. After finding that his students would have a hard time getting back on task after submitting, “I just say to do it later in the day and I think sometimes it’s hard for students to remember to submit the assignment”, said Duffy.
There are some drawbacks to the tech policy for both teachers and students, but these new rules can help students learn more efficiently, and help teachers with classroom management. Habits developed from these rules can allow students to complete work faster and easier, hopefully resulting in a less stressful and more successful school year.
