WCSS students adapt to cellphone ban

DUNROBIN – With the new school year comes new policies. Two months into the school year and students are adjusting to no longer being able to have their phone in class.

Since Ontario’s new cell phone ban in schools, Grade 7 to 12 students are not allowed to have their phones in class. If phones are seen by a teacher, the teachers are required to take them for the rest of the class. If they are seen again they will be brought to the office and have to be picked up at the end of the day.

This phone regulation was passed as a means to help children focus more on class and to motivate them to spend less time on their phones. So far, as the year progresses the phone ban has been in full effect.

With in depth warnings of the consequences at the beginning of the year as well as posters that outline the regulations all over the school, students are having mixed feelings about the necessity of taking away their cellphones.

While talking to students about their issues with the new regulation (it’s not a law, school boards do not have the power to create laws) many have a similar outlook. Talking to Izzy Lowrey, a Grade 10 student at West Carleton Secondary School, she says she “likes having her phone for emergencies.”

This is a common worry of students. A worry the school thinks is a non-issue since the school will be able to contact the students parents for them. Though students feel they should not have to rely on the school to contact their guardians.

“What if my mom is trying to call me and it is important?” Grade 11 student Isabel Gigliotti said. “She is not going to look up the office phone number.”

The students believe the phone ban is flawed, but the teachers think the new bill is working. The other party affected by this new phone ban, are the teachers stuck with the kids all day.

Teachers at West Carleton Secondary School (WCSS) think the phone ban is helping everyone especially the students. WCSS art teacher Sarah Kinney says its working.

“It is one hundred percent better,” she said. “Pre-COVID students would talk to each other and help each other and problem solve. Post COVID people would just go on their phones. So, now there is no option for that. People are actually talking. I love when I have loud, social classrooms where people are talking to each other.”