As president of the Edgemont Teachers Association, Jonathan Hansonbrook has been working on implementing a faculty-driven cellphone restriction policy at the secondary school since the fall, but without some higher authority, he said, it’s been hard to consistently enforce.
“We need teeth. I need as a president to be able to go to the administration and say, ‘This is the law.’ And I need to be able to go to my members and say, ‘This is what we need to do, like it or not,’” said Hansonbrook.
In the fight for our children’s attention, the need for authority has been a common refrain: When it comes to regulating cellphone use, students need adult guidance, and when it comes to policymaking, districts need state backing to effectively implement changes.
NYSUT held its sixth and final regional Disconnected conference almost one year to the day since the publication of Jonathan Haidt’s groundbreaking book, The Anxious Generation, and during the event, NYSUT President Melinda Person reflected on just how much we have learned about the dangerous impact cellphones have on students.
“It was actually worse than I had even imagined, when we started to hear from our school social workers and from the folks in our schools who support our students’ mental health,” Person said. “So, we said, ‘We’re going to fight to provide our students seven hours a day free from these distractions.’ And our Board of Directors unanimously passed a resolution in support of it. And we have been fighting for it ever since.”
Convened in Suffern, the latest Disconnected conference welcomed 250 educators, healthcare experts, students and parents to discuss the impact of cellphones, social media and technology on children, schools and learning. Educators spoke up in favor of the governor’s recent bell-to-bell proposal and explained why, unlike adults, students aren’t equipped to regulate themselves.
“Why should we regulate children’s behavior?” asked Dr. Carolyn McGullog, a psychologist and superintendent at Greenburgh North Castle Special Act School District. “Because that’s our job, as adults, as parents. We need to stop being afraid of telling our kids what to do,” she said to rousing applause.
After taking a scattershot approach to cellphone restrictions in her district, McGullog implemented a consistent districtwide restriction on cellphones for the length of the school day last year, and said the policy has been extremely beneficial for both students and educators. “We would not go back. I can tell you it works.”
White Plains took a hard stance on phones, too, mandating that phones be stored in lockers for the school day. The result? Fights and suspensions are down. Test scores are up. “It’s now been about nine years since we’ve instituted away for the day, and it’s just been wonderful. Our kids are so much more in-tune inside the classroom,” said Michael Eaton, principal at White Plains Middle School.
Eaton said parents appreciate the school’s willingness to set limits for their children. “They’re very thankful because ... most parents, 99.8 percent of our parents, want their kids to be focused in school and get the best education they can, and the only way that is possible is to put the cellphone away.”
At Suffern High School, students pushed back on a cellphone policy that restricted the devices for the length of the school day, but principal Paul Adler said that, for him, their opposition actually reinforced the need for such limits.
“As they spoke to me, I realized it was really their anxiety talking, because they had gone so many years and not been separated from their devices. It was really scary for them,” he said. “But sometimes, we do need to be the adults in the room and say, ‘It’s going to be okay.’”
The conference included questions from students from Yonkers, White Plains, Ardsley and Port Chester-Rye. Many students argued against cellphone restrictions, citing their overreliance on the devices — an overreliance that they said the adults in their lives were ultimately culpable for.
“If it’s such a danger, why are parents giving their kids phones at such an early age?” asked Joel Gonzalez, a junior at Charles E. Gorton High School in Yonkers. “Parents should educate themselves before giving their child a phone.”
“Why are we blaming the students instead of the adults that hand us these devices,” asked Lexie Santana, a ninth grader at Roosevelt High School Early College Studies in Yonkers.
“You guys are buying these devices for us ... and you guys expect us to do certain types of things on it, but at the same time, we can’t control what’s on the internet, and we can’t control what happens on our phones, so as parents and adults shouldn’t it be your responsibility to protect us as children and students, instead of blaming us for being the way we are?”
“It’s not about blaming anyone,” Hansonbrook responded. “This is a safety issue. This is about making sure that each of our students can become the very best person that they can possibly be, and phones in school, phones in general, are detracting from that.”
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