Carlsbad High’s administration has implemented phone policies in hopes of making students focus more in-class rather than being on their phones. Although the idea seems straightforward, it has come with some challenges for all teachers and administrators on campus.
The understanding of the phone policy is not the issue for most teachers at Carlsbad High. The true challenge for those enforcing the rules, such as chemistry teacher Lauren Peterson, is the unwillingness of others to enforce the policy as well.
“I think the rules are clear,” Peterson said. “They are clearly laid out. They’ve been clearly communicated to us, but they’re not enforced uniformly. Like, some teachers are super strict about it. Some teachers aren’t, but some teachers let them take it when they go to the bathrooms. Some campus supervisors will get on it if they see students on their phones walking around campus, and some campus supervisors don’t. So it’s just a trade-off.”
Another problem teachers encounter is that students are dishonest by getting an old phone of theirs and then using it for the phone cubby. Many students put up fake phones in order to keep their own, causing the phone policy to be ineffective.
“I think it’s kind of difficult [to enforce] because there’s a lot of kids that don’t put their phones up and use a phony or a fake phone,” Junior, at Carlsbad High School, Daniel Suarez said.
The last challenge is that the phone policy requires all students to put their phones away in a cubby. This makes all the classes stop and take away from class time to put phones away and get phones back.
“It just kind of slows down the class to begin with, because it just takes away time from… learning at the beginning of class,” Suarez said.
In advanced classes, there is not much time to waste, so enforcing the phone policy takes away from class. Also, the students in those classes tend to come to class prepared to be focused, so the phone policy is impractical.
“In AP classes…the phones aren’t really an issue with those students. So do I tell them to put it in their pocket? Yes, am I the best about always enforcing it? Definitely not,” Peterson said.
The phone policy has been implemented for a number of years now; however, the push for more enforcement of it has become greater in the past few years. Suarez believes the rules of this phone policy are easy to understand and have been for his time here.
“I think [the rules are] pretty clear. Just put your phone up and then kind of start class, but… that’s pretty much it,” Suarez said.
