Midnight in Paris, 7 AM in Tokyo, 3 PM in Los Angeles, 6 PM in Durham, New Hampshire. That was the moment on August 27th when Oyster River High School (ORHS) students received an email from principal Rebecca Noe that was set to change the way they went about their school day.
Directly before the school year started, the ORHS administration announced a schoolwide practice that banned the use of cell phones during classes. When students walk into their class, they must place their cell phones in designated “Phone Zones” and pick them back up when the period ends.
The practice was met with immediate praise from staff yet disapproval from students. However, as the school year has eased in, this practice has started to become the new norm.
“I was tired of the Writing Center being
not very productive.” -Jake Baver
Schools all over America are cracking down on the use of cell phones during school hours. According to a CBS News article titled “Schools across the U.S. restrict cellphones amid growing behavior, mental health, academic concerns,” 76% of schools around the country decided to prohibit the use of cell phones for nonacademic purposes. Many schools local to ORHS such as Saint Thomas and Exeter have also begun to pick up policies or practices restricting phone use.
The practice in place at ORHS came together because a group of staff members were tired of cell phones getting in the way of students doing their work. “I was tired of the Writing Center being not very productive,” said ORHS writing tutor Jake Baver, who was a member of the group that worked on the new policy. “If I could pinpoint one thing in our school system last year that could be changed to benefit productivity and mental attentiveness across the board, it would be getting rid of phones.”
Noe, who was also heavily involved in the process of implementing the phone policy, continued to emphasize that whether students like it or not, phones have been a problem. “In my first three years, there are two things that I’ve heard a lot about from teachers consistently. Cell phones are one of them, flex time is the other,” said Noe.
Baver speaks for most of the ORHS staff by praising how well the practice has gone so far this year. “The Writing Center is a more academic, quiet space. Advisory is more engaged than I’ve ever seen it.” He continues by saying, “I’m not a classroom teacher but from what I’ve heard, students are more focused, and wandering is down.”
However, many students feel there were much better ways of going about this issue. The buzz around the school is that in a lot of cases, it feels like the school went from “zero to sixty” when it comes to restricting students’ phones. “I don’t agree with the policy. The issue before was that it wasn’t being enforced.” said Jack Smith (‘25). He thinks the old practice should have worked but students never took it seriously because there were no repercussions.
Smith chooses to leave his phone at home for the day as opposed to leaving it in the designated phone zones. “As much as people think that the school is low on theft, I’ve been here for four years. It’s happened. It’s quite publicly happened. Stuff has been stolen before,” he adds.
Xander Ahn (‘27), who only had one year of complete freedom when it comes to phone use in school has been mostly on board with it. “[The phone rule] hasn’t really bothered me that much,” he says. However, Ahn is a part of the large group of students who believe that the school should back off during advisory and flex periods.
“Students are more focused,
and wandering is down.”-Jake Baver
While “Phone Zones” exist, questions about whether taking away the student’s opportunity to build on a number of important life skills was the right move. But the immediate positive classroom effects this practice has brought will never be discounted.
-Kevin Kell
Mouth of the River 
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