You’ve all seen it, the zombie looks of students walking down the hallway with their phones 18 inches from their faces, eyes shifted downwards, hardly a “hello” or an “hola” to be heard. You might have also read statistics from Jon Haidt and others about the correlations between the rise of cell phone use and increased reports of adolescent depression and anxiety. We had some data of our own, too. In October 2023, the International School of Panama (ISP) engaged Belonging and Intercultural Strategist Dr. Derrick Gay to design and deploy a comprehensive climate assessment, consisting of anonymous constituent surveys and focus groups. Two primary recommendations emerged:
Students also overwhelmingly shared during focus groups that student mental health should be more prioritized and both students and parents indicated that there should be more accountability for behaviors that were causing harm to the community. I wondered what should we do.
In a conversation in December 2023, Dr. Jessica Gilway, former Superintendent at the American Cooperative School (ACS) in La Paz, Bolivia shared that the Yondr implementation at ACS was a game changer for how students engaged with each other. Dr. Audrey Menard, Head of School at ISP, confirmed her commitment to our students and encouraged us to pursue phone free learning spaces at ISP. After seven weeks of a pilot program and 700 Yondr pouches, I can proudly say that ISP showed its commitment to excellence and a commitment to care with this strategy to support students.
If you are interested in implementing phone free policies at your school or engaging with strategies like Yondr pouches, consider the following playbook with a few of the approaches we deployed:
Create a communication timeline for the Board, teachers, parents, and students.
We began with a presentation to the Board in January 2024 and then set April 23 as our Day 1 because it coincided with the first day of Grade 12’s International Baccalaureate (IB) study leave (Grade 6-Grade 11 students were the focus of ISP’s pilot). Our communication runway included a Head of School Coffee Question and Answer meeting, faculty meetings introducing the idea and discussing logistics of the pilot, articles shared with teachers and parents in English and Spanish about the impact of phones on student wellbeing and research supporting phone free learning spaces, student advisory lessons, Parent Teacher Association conversations, student pouch decorating sessions, and many days of practicing the handling of pouches before the first day.
Clearly share your school’s rationale, the WHY.
At ISP, we implemented “Bell to Bell No Cell” because we want students to “make connections, deepen relationships, and focus on learning.”
Get academics and operations on board.
Unlike many curricular changes, implementing Yondr pouches required the collaboration and support of the athletics team, communications office, maintenance, security, technology, and admin assistants across the school community.
Be ready for the feelings.
When students received emails with the implementation timeline, policies for the pouches in action, and consequences for phone misuse, some felt angry, disempowered, and scared. I met with individual students and groups to listen, listen, listen. We were all nervous about how it was going to go, myself included. We were also relieved, hopeful, and proud when we began seeing the (immediate) effects of phone free learning spaces. Students shared that it wasn’t such a big deal after all or that they now talked to their advisory teacher before class, that they socialized way more during lunch, and that these situations felt good. Teachers felt happy, too. They reported knowing students more deeply in the last weeks of school because of increased casual and impromptu conversations.
Find replacements for student attention.
Following the advice of experts in the Digital Distractions presentation, we bought fidget spinners, sensory rings, board games, decks of cards, and other intermediary devices to engage students who are used to having their phones in their hands and in between them and their friends.
Support all staff members to be consistent in applying policies.
We established serious consequences for having a phone out of the pouch during the school day, including a requirement for parents to pick up the phone after school hours. We confiscated approximately 25 phones in the seven-week pilot implementation and followed the exact procedures each time for communicating with parents and students about next steps. The office managed the communication so that teachers could continue to focus on teaching.
Take time to work out the details.
There were myriad logistical questions; we needed to be responsive, adaptable, and ready to pivot. Initially, we were worried that there would be delays at dismissal, as all students clambered to unlock their pouches at 2:40. As it turned out, students needed spaces to unlock their pouches in the morning and we needed magnet availability before school. In addition, we realized that we needed cameras and iPads for IB Visual Art process portfolios or for measuring velocity in physics classes. Teachers and students came to me with suggestions for how to facilitate our processes and we adapted to improve our systems.
Keep your finger on the pulse.
Every time a parent came to pick up their child’s phone, I met them in person to talk about their child’s experience, taking every opportunity to reiterate our WHY and learn about their child’s perspectives. Every single parent I met supported ISP’s Yondr implementation.
Because there are clear links between the negative impact from smartphones on student mental health, behavior in class, ability to focus on academics, and relationships and belonging, we are in urgent need of interventions to support students. At ISP we have implemented one strategy to make connections, deepen relationships, and focus on learning that early qualitative feedback suggests has been one step in the right direction.
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Francesca Mulazzi, Ed.D., is the High School Principal at the International School of Panama.
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesca-mulazzi/
https://www.linkedin.com/school/isppanama/mycompany/
