There is a digital photography teacher in Spokane, Washington by the name of Michael Lee. He noticed something in 2017 about his students. Rather than coming in and wasting a lot of time, they rushed into the class and edited photos as fast as they could. This wasn’t because they wanted to do good work at school, it was because they wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible and the reason why made that teacher upset.
The children were engaged in their work because they wanted to get back to their cell phones. They were so hooked on checking social media and text messaging that they couldn’t stand to be away from their phones for more than a few minutes. The teacher was really upset about this so he decided to make a change. He said: “My overall goal was to give kids an opportunity to engage in what they’re doing,” Michael told KREM. “And that’s hard to do when every few seconds or few minutes there’s a beep on your phone and you have to check what it is.”
Lee started looking for different ways to store cell phones and found a large phone cubby on Amazon. He then came up with a system that would work for his students. Every student was assigned one of the cubbies and when the class started, they had to put their phones inside and lock them tight. There were also charging stations available, so the phones could be charged during the class.
The results showed up quickly and other teachers from that school and from other schools are now doing the same thing. It’s amazing what a little change can do and this teacher is making a change that is being felt across the country.
