Props to educators in Springfield and Chicopee for taking the brave and necessary step of barring the use of smartphones in school so that students can learn and be healthy (“More schools adopting phone-free policy,” Metro, Aug. 14). Major challenges such as post-pandemic phone addiction call for bold solutions. Boston Public Schools should implement the same policy.
Even before schools shut down in March 2020, my students were fighting phone addiction and losing. As a veteran English-language arts teacher, I’d long watched with dismay as phone technology and social media evolved to be an ever more irresistible lure — addiction by design. I had witnessed students struggle more and more with reading for extended periods, writing multipage papers, and even activities as basic as listening respectfully to a peer during discussion. At the same time, teen mental health took a turn for the worse.
Post-pandemic, what used to be an annoying problem is now a full-blown crisis. This past year at Fenway High, my students clung to their phones like the lifelines they’d been during quarantine. I get how important digital connection was during the height of the coronavirus. But quarantine is over now.
My students’ literacy and communication skills were hit hardest. Precious class time was wasted while my co-teacher and I waited for students to look away from their all-consuming screens and start writing. Practically every 10 minutes, students’ eyes tracked back to their phones. My most vulnerable students — those with learning disabilities, dealing with trauma, or experiencing mental health problems — struggled the most.
As we begin a new school year, the last thing students need is for their educators to enable an unhealthy reliance on their phones. Yet district and school leaders are standing by, making minor tweaks to ineffective phone policies that never worked in the first place.
Our students need and deserve better. Do we have it in us to do the brave and necessary thing?
Jen Rose-Wood
Roxbury
