Cell Phones Away!

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids, author Russell Shaw asks parents to do less to help their children so that they learn to solve their own problems. I highly recommend giving it a read – it seems like good advice. This brings me to my beginning of the school year request to Wardlaw+Hartridge families, consistent with Mr. Shaw’s appeal: please eliminate or limit calls and texts to your children during school hours – do less.

When I was a teenager, all phones were attached to the walls in my house. The closest things we had to cell phones were walkie talkies with an “impressive” 25-foot range. So, I rarely had any direct communication with my parents when I was at school. There was one exception in 11^th grade when I had to call them from the vice-principal’s office, but I will leave that story for another blog – spoiler alert: it did not end well!  

When my parents needed to get in touch with me during the day (like when I regularly left my trumpet at home) they called the main school number, and an actual human being answered the phone (such a rare pleasure these days); they took the message, passed it along, and it eventually was delivered to me. I know given our culture of instant gratification and 24-7 access to each other, this seems ridiculous to reminisce about this 20^th century approach. But maybe, just maybe, having less contact with your child might be doing them a favor: helping them to cope with the daily challenges on their own.  

But what if you do need to get a message to your child, how would one do it?  Is this even possible at W+H?  Indeed it is!  We have the exact same system in place that my school did in the 1970s. The school’s number is 908-754-1882; please add it to your contacts if you’ve not done so already.  As the daily message from Dean of Students, Christine Cerminaro states: Cell phones and earbuds are away from 8:00 a.m.-3:15 p.m. In other words, unless it is school-related email, your student should be neither receiving nor sending messages or calls via their cellphone (or laptops!) during the school day.

We don’t do this because we are out-of-touch with the digital age. We do this because we want your child’s focus to be on learning, with a minimum number of distractions. Imagine if the text you are sending them about a pending dentist appointment comes just as their teacher is conveying a crucial concept they’ll need for the next exam. That nugget of teacher info is lost.  Imagine instead, that you send your message through the main number or via email to our Upper School Administrative Assistant, Alissa Folkes, at afolkes@whschool.org. She has all our students’ schedules at her fingertips and will wait until an appropriate time to deliver your message. Your student will receive both your message AND that important concept from their teacher, all in a timely fashion. 

We’re not alone. You’ve no doubt seen headlines about the number of municipalities and states drafting and passing legislation to ban student cell phone use in public schools. This article from the Kaiser Family Foundation provides an effective overview: A Look at State Efforts to Ban Cellphones in Schools and Implications for Youth Mental Health. The article points out that there isn’t adequate research about whether or how harmful cell phone use is among students. I’ve spent years in labs and hold research in high regard, but this is a topic where I firmly believe logic and common sense can stand in for data collecting and number crunching. Fewer distractions = better student outcomes, on so many levels.  And your child will not have to turn their cell phone over to an adult for being spotted using it during the school day!

Minimizing your contact time with your child during the school day (doing less as proposed by Mr. Shaw) gives them the freedom to make their own decisions (even difficult ones), creates less distraction during the school day, and keeps them from violating our Upper School cell phone policy.  It is a win-win-win!  So, the next time you think about texting or calling your child please turn your texts into an email to Alissa Folkes or place your calls to the Front Desk instead. We’ll take it from there.  Just like back in the prehistoric days when I was in high school, and all phones had cords!