Before Wakefield High School adopted stricter cellphone rules, Ashley Rickman told students to put their devices away dozens of times every class period.
As a teacher, she was really strict about it, but it didn’t prevent students from trying to defy her rule anyway. But last year, as the Arlington school required students to lock their phones up in Yondr pouches for the full day, Rickman noticed significantly fewer disruptions.
The contrast was on display a few days before summer break started, Rickman said. After students turned in their pouches, they all had their phones in their hands walking through the hallways. It was a major distraction again.
Starting this fall, Arlington Public Schools is expanding the pouch program to more high school campuses. Wakefield, Washington-Liberty, Yorktown, H-B Woodlawn and the Arlington Career Center will use the storage program, the division announced. Langston and Arlington Community High School will adopt a “limited-use model.”
The expansion comes as school divisions across the D.C. region grapple with how to crack down on students’ cellphone use. Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bell-to-bell cellphone ban for K-12 public schools into law in May.
“Having that pouch is really a concrete symbol to the students that they need to disconnect,” Rickman said. “School is a place for learning, not for social media or TikTok or constantly texting.”
At the start of the school day at Wakefield, there were several areas where students could enter and show themselves putting their phones in the pouch and locking it. Some students, Rickman said, started “fake pouching,” instead putting their deodorant or calculator into the storage space.
Despite that, Rickman said, “it was a few times a week that I would have to address the issue, which was a huge difference from when they just had full access.”
As a result of the stricter approach, students were more engaged and focused during class time, Rickman said. In the hallways and at lunch, students spoke to each other face-to-face, instead of sitting with their heads down staring at their phones.
Critics of strict cellphone rules argue it’s important to be able to contact a child in the case of an emergency. Rickman acknowledged that concern, but said parents can call schools in those instances. At Wakefield, there was a designated space where students could unlock the pouch and access their device if there was an urgent need.
“If there’s an emergency at school, we want the kids to be focused,” Rickman said. “We don’t want them all on their individual devices getting different information from different people.”
Middle schools will use pouches on a case-by-case basis next year, with a focus on individual students or classes, the district said.
The Yondr pouches were piloted at Thomas Jefferson Middle last year, and parent Sarah Crouch said the result was more comfortable kids interacting with each other without having their phones nearby.
“It added another layer of accountability for students during the school day just to not have their devices on them,” Crouch said.
Crouch said middle schoolers should continue using the pouches too, because it’s “a good age to just start that enforcement and build on the momentum that we’re generally seeing across the country of just concern for students on personal devices during the school day.”
Fairfax County schools, meanwhile, piloted the Yondr pouches in middle schools last year.
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