Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers - Part 3
In January 2010 I wrote two posts titled, "Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers" and "What is More Disruptive - Banning or Embracing Cell Phones in the Classroom? ", both posts essentially talked about how we changed our school cell phone policy and allowed students to use their cell phones during the school day. I reported the number of cell phone violations we had in the first half of the year in 08-09 and how many we had in 09-10. Below is some of what I said then:
What is more disruptive, banning cell phones and requiring teachers to confiscate them, or embracing student cell phones and teaching students how to use them more responsibly. For the 2009-2010 school year we changed our cell phone policy at the school were I serve as an assistant principal. We allow students to use their cell phones in between classes and in the cafeteria during their lunch period. The rest of the school day is instructional time and their cell phones are to be off and out of site unless a teacher is using them as part of the lesson.
Additionally, we made another change to our cell phone policy. We no longer require teachers to confiscate a student's cell phone if they violate the policy. We tell the teachers to write up a conduct report and turn it in to the main office and we will handle it from there. Our goal was to eliminate the classroom struggle that ensues between the teacher and a student when there is a cell phone policy violation.
In June 2010 I wrote the post, "Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers - Part 2 ", where I chronicled how many cell phone violations we had for the entire 2009-2010 school year. You can follow the link to read the entire post. I now have the number of cell phone violations we had for the period from September 1, 2010 to December 23, 2010. During that time we had 15 cell phone violations. This represents a 62.5% decrease over the 2008-2009 school year (the last year we did not allow cell phones to be used) and a 50% decrease over the 2009-2010 school year (the first year we allowed student to use cell phones during the school day) during the same period of time. Essentially cell phones have become a non-issue at our school. They are no more problematic than any other discipline issue we deal with on a weekly basis. By allowing the students to use the cell phones between classes and in their lunch periods we take away their arguments. Rarely does a student argue with us when we discipline them for a cell phone violation because we give them opportunities to use their cell phones throughout the day. Here is what the data looks like in a chart:
Time Period Number of Cell Phone Violations
Sept. - Dec. 2008 40
Sept. - Dec. 2009 30
Sept. - Dec. 2010 15
