As the trees on campus bloom for spring, one specific species is quickly becoming extinct: the Phone Tree.
Phone trees are the numbered pockets in every classroom where phones are expected to be turned in at the beginning of every class. However, phone trees have lost their initial power over students and according to some, are becoming obsolete.
First implemented at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, phone trees were hung in every classroom on campus. Spearheaded collectively by the faculty on campus, David Koritkoski, the Dean of Students, broke the news at the first whole school assembly of the year. Entering the third trimester, it is rare for a teacher to still enforce students to turn in their phones.
Grace McCullagh, a four-year senior, has noticed a plummet in overall phone tree usage.
“I feel like most teachers have given up on putting our phones in the phone tree at the start of class, but some teachers make us use them during quizzes and tests, or days when they know we really have to focus,” she commented.
Grace believes phone trees generally do more bad than good and wonders about the mental health aspect of phone separation.
“I feel like it feels really forced to have my phone taken away. A lot of students I know have, like, attachment issues with their phones. So, for a lot of people, it can just cause anxiety and not really help them because they can’t focus on their work,” she said.
According to Psychology Today, “more people today experience a sense of anxiety on being separated from their phones, with approximately 60 percent of mobile phones users experiencing nomophobia, a combination of the words no, mobile, and phobia, meaning a fear of being parted from one’s phone.” In a study, the results found that participants exhibited some form of phone attachment in order to maintain social connections with others. Separation from one’s phone would cause individuals to display tendencies of anxiety and distress.
Tyla Taylor, an AP Psychology teacher and phone tree enforcer, acknowledges the psychological benefits of phone trees in minimizing distraction.
“I do think the phone holders have an overall positive effect on the learning environments,” Taylor said. “Our phones [social media apps specifically] were created to be addictive. I’ve read psychology studies that the mere presence of the phone on a desk, even when not in use, is more distracting than when it is out of sight. It’s part of our psychology that they would be addictive. Therefore, having them put away and not on us in some way (in our pocket, backpack, etc.) allows for some space between us and our phones. I believe the phone holders in classrooms help overall concentration and take away the pull that the phone may have.”
Taylor believes that students need the opportunity to learn how to implement technology in their lives in a beneficial and non-disruptive nature.
“I do think our students need to learn how to manage this distraction, as technology will always be present in their lives beyond Williston as well,” she said. “I think we have to trust and teach our students how to use [technology] productively, rather than as a distraction.”
Shelton Windham, a math teacher who only uses phone trees for quizzes and tests, believes that it is not only the students’, but the teachers’ responsibility to create an engaging and productive learning environment.
“I like people being able to make their own informed choices, because people have very different experiences and inclinations. So, I think one-size-fits-all solutions are in general not great,” he commented. “If someone decides they don’t want to pay attention at that moment, one, maybe they’re doing it for a good reason, maybe they have something going on in their life, or maybe their brain just works differently and I’m making some assumption. Or two, maybe I haven’t achieved my end. And then, I need to focus on that.”
Asked about the decline in phone tree usage, Windham believes that not all teachers want to be ‘enforcers.’
“In all honesty, I think teachers get tired. It is exhausting to enforce things all the time. And the sort of person who really wants to ‘lock everything down’ is a very particular sort of person, and not all teachers are like that. Like I, for instance, did not get into teaching so I could try to control people. I got into teaching because I like exploring ideas and exploring with people.” he said.
Kim Polin, the Academic Dean and a teacher, has witnessed the benefits of separating phones from classroom learning.
“As a teacher myself, I have been very happy with the impact on my own classroom. Students are in a good habit of using the phone holder and I no longer see issues with students reaching for phones when they should be focused on class,” she commented.
Polin believes that students and teachers should work collaboratively to nurture a positive learning environment and foster healthy habits that will extend beyond Williston.
“I hope and expect that students also see this as their problem to solve; our faculty’s goal is to build good habits that will last into college and beyond when we’re no longer there to enforce them,” she stated.
Despite different opinions on the use of phone trees, the common thread that connected everyone was trust. Everyone who was interviewed commented on the significance of fostering a collaborative and mutually trusting environment to facilitate healthy habits for the future of students.
As a concluding thought, Windham questioned society’s premature antagonization of phones and the historical implications of censoring technology.
“I’m a little skeptical of the idea that screen time is necessarily bad,” he said. “And there’s the whole idea over time where anytime there’s new technology, including things like books, like when the novel came out and everybody said, ‘the novel will corrupt the youth.’ But nobody would say that now. Next to nobody would say that now. The same thing happened with radio, same thing happened to television, same thing happens with the Internet…and so, I’m a little skeptical of a very stark conclusion that phones are inherently bad.”
