Many classrooms in VHHS have a cell hotel. According to a survey in which 83 teachers responded, 63 enforce their use, according to math teacher and data coach Abbie Gutzmer. This policy has been put in place in the past few years with mixed reactions among the student body and certified staff.
Math teacher Jim Pardun does not enforce the policy and says he rarely encounters cell phone issues from his students.
“If the students in your class have developed a culture that is respectful of one another, where everybody understands the classroom rules and everybody understands why cellphones are limiting to your learning…then I don’t think the cell hotels are necessary,” Pardun said.
However, not every classroom teacher has this same perspective, as English teacher Siobhan Szabo and social studies teacher Amanda Carroll noticed in their American Studies class that notifications were distracting students during class.
“We made a decision to start collecting [phones], and we’ve noticed a huge difference in focus and learning,” Szabo said.
Referencing a video from the Wall Street Journal, Carroll added, “What [cell phones] are doing mentally is draining your brain whenever you’re flipping from one thing to another…so we kind of talked about how we want [students] to be locked in the learning that takes place in our class…it’s been very helpful to have it to minimize those distractions.”
According to English teacher Rebeca Garcia, more students were getting distracted in class without cell hotel usage than in previous years.
“When I don’t start enforcing the cell hotel [policy], I spend a lot of time asking students to put their phones away,” Garcia said. “Now that we are enforcing it in all of my English classes…the students are more focused and we’re not doing that extra prompting, which takes away from instruction time.”
Based on what Garcia said, if schools do not have strict phone rules in place, some students will have the urge to check their phones during class and disrupt the learning environment, as Szabo also observed.
However, some students don’t see the usefulness of cell hotels in the same way that teachers do.
Liam Nelson (9) said that the policy in his middle school was different from the rules he is experiencing at VHHS.
“In middle school, [teachers] let you have [your phone]…as long as they didn’t see it,” Nelson said.
Additionally, Nicholas Mashchenko (11) believes students should be allowed to hold on to their personal belongings.
“[Cell hotels] are trying to help people not be distracted, but at the same time, everything is on people’s phones,” Mashchenko said. “If [the students are] not on their phones in class, they should be able to keep it. It’s their personal item.”