School Culture and Cellphone Boundaries

Dear Griffin School Community,

Executive Summary:
Cellphones are powerful and remarkable tools with great utility. We have also found that learning and student mental health improve drastically when students are fully present with their teachers and classmates. We will be making our school a phone-free space to improve teaching and learning using a program called Yondr.

Griffin School seeks to be a place where students engage deeply in learning and connect in meaningful ways with a diverse community of peers and adults. Through those experiences, we are helping our students become curious, creative, resilient, adaptive, culturally competent, and compassionate people. Every day in their experience at Griffin School, we want students to:

• Participate actively in collaborative classroom learning
• Have frequent opportunities to connect with each other through face-to-face discourse, physical activities, and shared social experiences
• Be aware of their connection to the natural world
• Have space to reflect, to think creatively and critically
• Become self-aware of their gifts, their strengths, and their inherent value

More and more, we have found that cellphone use is a deterrent to our school goals. Yesterday, our core faculty and staff came to consensus about the urgent need to develop boundaries around cellphone use on our campus in order to support the healthy growth of our students and to have the kind of supportive, thoughtful community we always aspire to have.

Cellphones distract from and interrupt learning, and our former policy was intended to address that issue. Based on a growing body of research into the impact of cellphones on adolescents and on our own observations at Griffin School, we have come to understand that cell phones and their embedded apps hinder and disrupt the healthy development of our students in fundamental ways. The evidence suggests that cellphones increase social isolation, anxiety, and depression in teens.

In the years since cellphones have become ubiquitous in our culture (around 2008), the trends for anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and a lack of a sense of belonging in young people have become a national crisis. At Griffin School, our student surveys have shown that our students are experiencing those conditions at an even higher level than the national norms.

As one part of our strategy to support student health and wellbeing, we are creating boundaries on the use of cellphones on campus in partnership with a program called Yondr. In the first two weeks of school, we will be using the same phone policy we have had in the past. During that time, we will set up and discuss the plans for this new system. After the Labor Day weekend, on September 3rd, we will be using Yondrpouches for phone storage during the school day in order to become a phone-free space.

The Yondr Program utilizes a simple, secure pouch that stores a phone. Every student will secure their phone in a personally assigned Yondrpouch at the start of their first class of the day. Students will maintain possession of their phones and will not use them until their pouches are opened at the end of their final class of the day. Students are required to bring their Yondr pouch to and from school each day and are responsible for their pouch at all times. A one-sheet about how this system works is attached.

We recognize this change will be a significant one for our students and families, and we understand that the transition into a new set of norms around how we engage with each other will feel stressful for some students. We plan to provide a lot of support and care especially during the first few weeks as we are getting used to communicating with each other without cellphones.

We have thought very carefully about issues that may come up like communications during an emergency and the need for communications around daily family logistics. We feel confident that we will be able to adjust our protocols and norms and serve everyone's needs in situations like that.

If you have any questions about our goals around creating a positive and healthy school culture and the boundaries we are creating with cellphones, please let me know (adam@griffinschool.org). We will share more details in the coming weeks, so I hope everyone will feel clear on the new processes before we implement them in September.

Thank you for your support of our important goals for our students' health, wellbeing, and growth and for a positive school culture.

Thanks,
Adam Wilson
Head of School