Students and teachers returning to school at Liverpool Regional High School will be leaving their phones at the door.

To reduce classroom disruption and improve learning outcomes students and staff are no longer permitted to use cell phones during class time.

Beth Woodford-Collins, coordinator of programs for grades 7-12 at South Shore Regional Centre for Education says putting phones away allows students to be more engaged with their education and each other.

“Problem solving is one of our competencies that we are working on to ensure that students have when they graduate,” said Woodford-Collins. “Communication, problem solving, critical thinking, technological fluency, all of these competencies are competencies that actually do involve direct communication and interaction and engagement in a more dynamic, in-person way.”

She says taking the cell phone off the table for an hour allows the students to get to know each other in a different way.

That’s not to say technology won’t be used as every student has access to their own Chromebook.

Woodford-Collins says providing students with same access to technology while in class produces another desired outcome, equity.

“It really does remove that A) distraction and B) that disparity between student A and student B when everybody's got the same device, Chromebook,” said Woodford-Collins.

SSRCE Director of Programs and Student Service Denise Dodge-Baker says the strategy will be monitored and evaluated at regular intervals.

“The school is going to continue to kind of look at it and get feedback and response in a survey, kind of a check in as time progresses to kinda say, how's it working? Is there an aspect of the strategy that we need to tighten or is there a part of this that’s working well for people?” said Dodge-Baker.

According to a statement released by LRHS on its social media, 80 percent of office referrals come from conflict from using cell phones and misuse of social media.

Dodge-Baker says the strategy was developed after discussions with other school districts around how they deal with mobile devices in class.

If things pan out, she hopes the model being used at LRHS can be used in schools across the province.

E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

To listen to the broadcast of this story, press play below.