The Best Student Cell Phone Policy: Off and Away
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder outlines the most effective cell phone policy — phones completely off and stored away — and shares enforcement strategies.
Key Takeaways
- Off and away is the standard - Not silenced in pockets, not face-down on desks — completely powered off and stored
- Enforcement is everything - The policy only works with consistent, school-wide enforcement backed by administration
- Start strict and stay strict - Schools that begin with firm enforcement find that students adapt quickly and compliance becomes routine
Transcript
What's the best student cell phone policy?
I believe it's this.
Phones should be off or on airplane mode, period.
Now the trouble is, that's very difficult to enforce, right?
Typically we can't tell if a cell phone is off or if it's just on silent, and often students are actually still using their phones whenever they get a moment, and we still have the disruption and the distraction that comes from students having phones on them.
And I've seen a lot of attempts to take students' phones away or put them in a pouch that they can't open or put them in a pouch up by the entrance of the room.
We have all these systems that are just kind of a lot of work to deal with and don't really solve the problem.
Because you know what a lot of students do, right?
Is they take a fake phone that they no longer use—maybe the battery's not dead— but there's no service on it.
They turn that in, they put that in the pocket, and then they continue using their phone.
What if we could actually enforce a phone off or on airplane mode policy rigorously?
Well, here is how you do that.
This is kind of like a spyware or like a bug detector, RF detector.
You can get these on Amazon for like 50 bucks.
And what it does is it detects the signal.
So if it's not on airplane mode or if it's not fully powered off, like in other words, if the student can use the phone, this will pick it up and you don't need to like go around your, you know, every class checking everybody.
But if you have a few of these around your school or if your administrators have them, or if you just have one, Kind of on the doorframe as students walk in.
That can be a very, very effective visible enforcement of a policy that says cell phones have to be off or on airplane mode, period.
And we can stop a lot of the time consuming and drama creating collection of cell phones and turning them in and handing them back and all that.
And just say, look, it's got to be off or there's a consequence.
If it's on, we're going to find out.
And if you actually have a detector, you can have some credibility in making that claim.
So let me know what you think.
Let me know what you're running into with cell phones.
I feel like there's still sometimes a valid educational case for having students use their phones.
But for the most part, they are a distraction.
We want them off.
We want students focused on learning.
Let me know what you think.