BENNINGTON – Three weeks into a policy restricting personal phone use by students, teachers and principals at Mount Anthony Union schools report a mostly smooth implementation. They also cited immediate benefits in terms of student learning and non-digital socialization. The policy requires students as they enter school to place their phones inside a locking , which can only be unlocked by tapping the bag against a mounted magnetic device as they exit the building.
“We started the same day as the high school,” said MAU Middle School Principal Christopher Maguire. “We wanted to roll it out together. I think that for the middle school, I would say it was pretty smooth from the get-go.
” “You observe changes in the climate and the culture in the weirdest ways,” said MAU High School Principal Timothy Payne. “I have lunch duty every day, and [previously] you could have the phone out. So my lunches are louder now.
So no one is scrolling through the feed or watching videos. They are talking to each other.” There are about 200 to 250 students present during a lunch period, he said, adding that the extra volume is “not a bad thing, just more human interaction.
” Maguire said school entry procedures were worked out before students arrived, when the regulations were first implemented, on October 7. “The main difference between the two schools was that [high school] students are assigned a bag to carry home and bring back,” he said. “And at the middle school, we.
