This story is the third in a series called Disconnected, in which we gather various groups of people to engage in candid conversations about the forthcoming bell-to-bell school phone ban. Check out our previous conversations with students and parents here.
As lawmakers considered a bell-to-bell phone ban in schools this spring, some of the most vocal support for the measure came from teachers. They described classrooms overrun by vibrating phones and lunch periods dominated by students looking down at their devices instead of across the table at their peers.
Desperate for a solution, they asked the state to step in. With the support of Gov. Kelly Ayotte, lawmakers responded, passing one of the strictest statewide bans in the country.
In less than a month, teachers will return to school buildings transformed by this new law. As school districts scramble to develop policies ahead of the first day of classes, the Concord Monitor gathered four teachers for a conversation about their hopes and fears regarding the ban.
While largely supportive of the new law, some of the teachers – who span four school districts, four subjects, and two grade levels – worried about enforcement, expressing concern that it would be another responsibility that will fall on them.
The group also expressed disappointment that the state failed to provide more policy guidance and financial resources to support the change.
“They’re addicted,” one teacher said of students. “It’s like saying ‘drugs are illegal,’ and then not providing any services to help the people who are addicted.”
Despite their fears, the teachers expressed open optimism that the ban could reshape education in positive ways – rehabilitating students’ attention spans and improving their social interactions.
The participants in the conversation were:
- Heather Ouellette-Cygan, an English teacher entering her 25th year at Concord High School.
- Dan Williams, a music teacher entering his 20th and final year at John Stark Regional High School.
- Robert Montgomery, a social studies teacher entering his 14th year at Merrimack Valley High School.
- Ian West, a sixth-grade science teacher entering his 9th year at Three Rivers School in Pembroke.
This conversation was held on July 30. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.
On a scale from 1 to 5 – with 1 being total opposition and 5 being total support – how do you feel about the bell-to-bell phone ban?
HEATHER OUELLETTE-CYGAN: 4.5. Maybe this will work, but also as an English and media literacy teacher, there are times when it has been useful for students to have their phones to be able to work on a project, make a video, or take a picture. I teach film studies, so right in the first week of school, they have a little video project that they go out and shoot during class. I don’t know how that’s going to work.
DAN WILLIAMS: 4 or 4.5. The devil’s in the details with something like this, and exceptions will need to be made. I’m fortunate that as a music educator, I probably don’t have it quite as hard as some of my colleagues at this table. It’s hard to be on your phone when you’re actively engaged in playing a musical instrument. But, there’s still all sorts of ways where personal electronic devices have been helpful: pull up a metronome, or pull up a guitar tuner and tune yourselves.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY: 4. Initially, I was a little bit more skeptical, but the more that I’ve thought about it, I’m really optimistic that having seven hours a day where students are off of their phones has to have positive impacts on concentration and communication skills, let alone mental health. I’m excited about the potential of this, but I’m more nervous about how it will be implemented. When it comes down to being the enforcer – as educators are going to have to be – I just worry about how that’s going to happen and what the dynamic will be if there’s more negative interactions between students and teachers.
IAN WEST: I may be more in the middle. I’ll give myself a 3. The reason for that is because in my school, we already have a schoolwide policy where students can’t have their phones. The whole time I’ve been there, it’s never been an issue. While I don’t think there should be phones in schools most of the time, I’m skeptical of a blanket statewide ban. The state saying “no phones in schools” removes the opportunity for a lot of nuanced conversations.
For the three of you who teach at high schools, what does your current school policy look like and how well do you think it works?
ROBERT MONTGOMERY (at Merrimack Valley High School): Our policy has been that you can’t have phones during class, but you can use them between periods and at lunch. I have thought of that as a balancing act, but it’s not perfect. As I’ve seen more information coming out about how these phones affect them, I’m more and more leaning towards thinking maybe it is better to just ban them entirely.
OUELLETTE-CYGAN (at Concord High School): Our policy is similar. Phones should not be out during instructional time, except at the teacher’s discretion. Teachers are free to make their own classroom policies.
It takes so much energy to continually stop and ask, “Why is your phone out?” And it’s not just the phones. They also have the earbuds in their ears, and they have their watches, and it’s just constant, and they’re so distracted. Some students are very good at regulating themselves, and it’s very annoying to them for us to have to keep stopping and telling the others to put their phones away.
WILLIAMS (at John Stark Regional High School): We have a building with very spotty reception, which makes it easier not to be on your phone. Our policy has been that they’re not allowed during classes. They are allowed in common areas, such as the cafeteria and atrium, and during passing time.
We’ve had frequent flyers who have sucked up a lot of time from administrative staff. Part of the problem is getting a large faculty to all abide by a policy. If there’s certain faculty members who are more lax, kids pick up on that right away, and then they push it in other areas. Getting us all on the same page – sometimes it can be like herding cats.
What does it feel like to police phone use in your classrooms?
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: It’s frustrating, angering, and I really try to not do it, because I know they are addicted. And there are very smart people who have designed those phones to make them addicted. It’s very frustrating. I try not to get too angry. I’ll say things like, “Put your corporate overlords away.” And I started saying toward the end of last year, “You’re never going to know your potential if you don’t start focusing on school and not being distracted.” And that I think helps with some. I’m so desperate.
MONTGOMERY: It certainly takes up a lot of time and I have to pick and choose my battles. There’s occasionally some times where I just put on the blinders and try to finish up the lesson. It’s difficult. I am hopeful that maybe it is now the law… Though I’m going to be really interested to see if students do some sort of organized protest. I always tell my kids to “Make good trouble.” We’ll see…
Prior to the ban, what strategies, if any, did you consider to regulate technology use in your own classrooms?
MONTGOMERY: I’ve tried the shoe pocket thing in the past. I always think about the fact that I have so few minutes every day with my students. The more time I’m spending on managing a system where they have to put their phones away, that’s going to detract from time at the beginning and at the end. But then again, having to stop frequently to address a kid that has their phone out – it’s a lot and it is really distracting. You just can’t get through stuff.
How do you feel about the out-of-classroom component of the ban?
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: Although I wonder about enforcement, I think it’s really good for their brains. They don’t know how to be bored. They do not know how to just sit there and have nothing to do, because as soon as there’s any downtime at all, even in class, even when they’re not supposed to have their phones out, even the good students are taking their phones out because they don’t know how to not have the distraction. I think just allowing their brains to be off their phones every day for seven hours – it’s going to be so healthy for their cognitive development, because their brains are still forming and developing and we don’t know how this is going to impact them because it’s so new.
MONTGOMERY: On the one hand, if school is preparing them for a career, what job out there says you can’t use your phone at lunch? So, in that sense, it sounds natural that they should be able to just be on their phone. On the other hand, I only got a phone in college and that was never an issue for me. I remember sitting at the lunch table and I’d get the paper news and sit there and talk with my friends. And so I just think it’ll be difficult to get into a new pattern. But I think hopefully if we can get the procedures right, and we can get kids to buy in and not resist this so much, I think it’ll be great. That’ll hopefully boost their ability to have meaningful conversations with their peers at the lunch table. So, I am optimistic and hopeful. It just comes down to how the plan rolls out.
WEST: My students do not have a problem being on their phones during the day. They seem fine. One of the things that we have to acknowledge is that software is designed specifically to be addictive. I feel a little bit like this puts the blame on kids for their phone use. They’re learning it from the adults they see, and they’re battling against billion-dollar forces, which are conspiring to devour their attention. And this is why I think with a statewide ban, we lose the opportunity to talk about what’s really happening and why it’s happening.
WILLIAMS: I’m the old guy. We went to high school in the ‘80s. We didn’t have cell phones. Ian, your school is an example that in 2025, you can have a group of students not on their phones. Granted, it’s middle school instead of high school, but it can be done. The lunch and break aspect is going to be the most difficult to enforce. And study hall, which isn’t often used for the purpose it was intended. Really rampant phone use is happening in study halls.
School starts in about a month. Have you heard anything from your administrators about what a policy will look like?
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: I was in a meeting with our principal recently and I think that they want to do something, but the way the law is written is kind of fuzzy. There’s part of the policy that states they have to get input from parents first, and so they’re trying to figure out when that is going to happen. And there’s no deadline, so that’s problematic, because I would love to walk in the door on the first day and have the policy printed in my prospectus and the whole building on board, but I think administrators don’t really know yet what they need to do.
WILLIAMS: Our administration was happy to hear this had passed. It’s a positive, hopeful vibe, but there has been no clearcut policy yet. We have some pre-start of school teacher development days, which I’m sure will be spent partly on hammering this out.
It’s an unfunded mandate: Here’s the law. Now, you go figure out how it’s going to happen. And I’m sure it’s going to look very different across the state because different districts are going to come up with different ideas, and then it’ll be like a petri dish sort of thing. We’ll see which districts are really good, and maybe their attendance improves, and test scores improve, and graduation rates improve.
MONTGOMERY: I’m dreading the expectation simply being that cell phones are away and teachers have to enforce it in the hallways. I just don’t think that’s going to work. The only thing that I think is really going to work are those phone pouches that get locked and there’s the key at the front door that you unlock on the way out. Everything else that I’ve seen – I don’t know how the management of it would work.
Mr. West, how compliant are your students with your school’s bell-to-bell ban?
WEST: In almost nine years, I’ve caught maybe two students with phones during the day. We have the advantage of being a fifth- through eighth-grade middle school. So they come in as nine- and ten-year-olds. Most of them don’t have a phone at that point. They’re probably going to get it sometime between fifth and sixth grade. And so, they’re already in the environment where the expectation is that they don’t have it with them and it’s already habit. Because they’re younger, I think that makes it easier. In high school, it’s much more difficult. They’re driving; they have jobs.
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: At Rundlett, Concord’s middle school, they have a pretty strict phone policy and the students for the most part don’t have their phones out. And so as ninth graders, I think in the beginning, they start strong but they quickly learn that “I can have my phone,” and it all falls apart quickly.
Some schools have explored buying locked storage containers that students drop their devices into when they walk into the building. Is that something you think would work at your schools?
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: I wish.
WILLIAMS: I don’t know. You have kids that have late arrival, you’d have to have someone there to deal with taking them all and then redistributing them. That sounds like a full-time job.
MONTGOMERY: We have students who are in and out of the building all day going off to Concord Regional Technical Center. That would be a real pain if they were locked up. And I think we’d see massive resistance from both students and parents who would be very frustrated by a policy like that. For me, the policy has got to revolve around being able to have their phones but maybe not being able to access them.
What would that look like?
MONTGOMERY: The pouches. In my head, that’s the only way I see that working.
If your school doesn’t take phones at the beginning of the day and teachers are tasked with policing phones not only in their classrooms but also in passing periods and at lunch, what do you think will happen?
MONTGOMERY: Burnout. Absolute burnout. I think we already struggle with hiring enough good teachers and that would be adding one more thing to the plate. Nobody gets into this profession because they want to be like a corrections officer. We want to have positive interactions with students and being the phone police is going to make that so difficult that I think for some people it might be enough to decide it’s just not worth it.
WILLIAMS: I’m one of the building reps for our teachers association and I think you’re going to start to see faculty versus administration head butting over whose responsibility it really is to enforce this policy, and that’s not good.
Parents have expressed concerns about not being able to contact their children during the day – either in the event of an emergency or to deal with logistics. Mr. West, how do you handle this at your school?
WEST: I will occasionally have students who need to call their parents for whatever reason and they say, “Hey, can I go to the office to call my mom or dad?” Sure, done.
And that’s not abused or disruptive?
WEST: No. It’s just like raising their hand to go to the bathroom.
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: For many years, we all survived with having landline phones. There is a phone in every classroom. I would like parents to think: Is communicating with your child so important that you actually would call the school in the days before cell phones, or is that a plan you could’ve made before they came to school?
One concern I’ve heard is that students are simply going to start using their laptops for what they currently use their phones to do. How likely do you think that is?
MONTGOMERY: They can’t get TikTok on their Chromebooks. I think the worst aspects of their phones and social media can’t be accessed by their Chromebooks.
WILLIAMS: The Chromebooks are very locked down and we use a program called GoGuardian, so whenever they’re on their Chromebooks, we can see what they’re doing.
Do you think the ban will reduce plagiarism and cheating at all?
MONTGOMERY: Maybe, but I think in the age of ChatGPT, if they’re doing an assignment at home, they’ll still have access to those programs.
How do you think the first months of the new school year are going to play out?
MONTGOMERY: I actually think the first few days might actually be better than we expect. I think it’ll probably be a bit of a shock and awe campaign of “these phones must go away,” and I think students will wait to see how things play out. So I really think it’s going to be October when we really start to see how this is going to go long term.
WILLIAMS: I agree. It’s going to start strong, but a high school is a big place, and as the year progresses, it’s going to get increasingly more difficult to keep the pressure on, and all of that is dependent on the policy that actually gets voted on by the stakeholders.
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: I’m cautiously optimistic. I heard from somebody from another school that has a bell-to-bell policy that you just have to be strong for two months and then it just wears them down instead of them wearing us down.
Are there any requests or words of advice that you would like to pass along to your administrators as they’re working on policies over the next month?
WEST: I’m going to go above administrators. I’m going to actually go to the state. I think it would be helpful if the state provided some documentation or guidance that helps us as teachers and administrators explain to students why this is in place. They all know that this is bad for them. They know how many hours they’re wasting. During COVID, there was a lot of information coming from the CDC and the state, and so it was relatively easy for us to say this is why we need to do these things. Right now, the state is saying no phones bell-to-bell, but they’re not giving any kind of lesson plans for us to communicate to our students why we all need to back off on usage of these devices in school.
MONTGOMERY: I want to double down on that. Resources are important.
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: I mean they’re addicted. It’s like saying “drugs are illegal,” and then not providing any services to help the people who are addicted.
WILLIAMS: You can’t “just say no” on phones.
OUELLETTE-CYGAN: Right. We’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.
Besides the teaching guidance Mr. West mentions, what would resources look like?
WEST: It would be great if the state could give the schools the money for the phone pockets if that’s what most schools are going to do.
WILLIAMS: To harken back to COVID, there was a lot of funding. It would be great if schools received something.
MONTGOMERY: Schools are pretty stretched thin as it is. We have lots of mandates and expectations and so adding another one – it’s a lot.
Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.
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