Bell to Bell

“The constant use of personal electronics—not just phones, but earbuds, watches, and other distractions—is impacting our students’ ability to focus, connect with their fellow students, be present in reality, and engage in authentic learning.” That’s how New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) President Melinda Person summed up the harm caused by allowing cellphones and related devices in our schools. Last year, she led a successful fight for state-level legislation banning such devices “bell to bell,” ensuring that students would have at least seven hours a day to be kids, build relationships, and engage fully with their teachers and classmates. (You can read about that fight here: go.aft.org/f9v.)

To find out how bell-to-bell distraction-free learning has changed New York’s schools, we spoke with three local union leaders. Matt Haynes, president of the Tri-Valley Teachers Association and member of the NYSUT board of directors, has 20 years of experience teaching English, primarily to eighth-graders. Chris Kazim, president of the Port Chester Teachers Association, has been a high school special educator and social studies teacher for 17 years. Kevin Toolan, president of the Patchogue-Medford Congress of Teachers and member of the NYSUT board of directors, has over 20 years of teaching experience in elementary and middle grades and is currently mentoring new teachers.

–EDITORS

EDITORS: Let’s start by looking back at the rise of smartphones and related devices.

KEVIN TOOLAN: When I started teaching in the early 2000s, the computer was a big, heavy box. We were lucky if we had two to four in our classrooms. They were slow and didn’t connect to the internet. Ever since cellphones became widespread, our students have been distracted. Before this year’s ban, phones were buzzing throughout the day, whether texts from parents and friends or notifications from apps. Students were constantly trying to sneak a look at a notification or send a message. And if they couldn’t look, they seemed to be thinking about looking.

In addition, the hallways were filled with students wearing AirPods and scrolling—not talking to each other. Then COVID hit, with everyone on screens all the time. Post-COVID, my district allowed phones in the lunchroom and hallways. Our kids were zombies. They didn’t answer questions or talk to each other. They were distracted. It’s tempting to say “withdrawn,” but I don’t think that’s accurate because they would communicate through their phones.

We’ve had—and still have—problems in early elementary school. The children don’t have phones, but they seem to be addicted to screens—especially the four- and five-year-olds. They expect, even demand, to be rewarded with screen time. We have to teach them how to play games like Go Fish. Games are not only fun, they reinforce academic skills like counting and support developing social skills like taking turns and being gracious win or lose.

CHRIS KAZIM: I started as a teaching assistant at Port Chester High School in 2007, around the time the first iPhone was released. Things changed quickly a few years later when the iPhone 4 came with a front-facing, or selfie, camera; apps like Instagram took off.

I knew something was wrong in 2015. After a meeting, I was a few minutes late to class, and I walked into silence. All 15 kids were on their phones. I looked at them and said, “No. Stop.” I changed the rules midway through the game. From that day forward, all phones went into a box or caddy in my classroom at the start of class, and they picked them up at the end. The first few weeks were tough. It was a major change for my students. But they got used to it, and they paid more attention.

Going forward, I shared this strategy with my co-teachers. As a special education teacher, I’ve co-taught with more than seven teachers over the past decade. This policy has transformed every classroom. A few years ago, a student asked me to write a college recommendation letter. When I asked them why, they didn’t say the usual things about inspiring them to study history or become a teacher. They said, “You’re the only teacher in my whole high school career who asked me to put my phone away and took it away from me during class.” They added, “US History wasn’t my favorite class, but it was by far the class where I was most focused.”

MATT HAYNES: I’m in a very small rural school district with just one pre-K through 12 building serving about 830 students. We didn’t even have reliable cell service or Wi-Fi until about 10 years ago, and phones in school didn’t start to be a problem until after COVID. When we returned to in-person learning, all of the high school students had to have a phone—and the right phone, just like they had to have the right clothes. It became another source of peer pressure, even among kids who wanted to do well academically. A few years ago, my district required middle schoolers to keep their phones in their lockers, but our “policy” in high school was that teachers could decide—that pitted teachers against each other in the students’ eyes.

When Chris (who I met a few years ago) told me about the student who asked for the recommendation letter, I was inspired to make my high school classes phone-free. I tried it last year in my speech class, which provides college credit. These are motivated students, so they complied, but it obviously caused a great deal of anxiety. I explained that I can’t teach well with my phone in my pocket—I can’t help wondering who is texting, etc.—and I wanted them to have 40 minutes without distractions too. By the end of the course, most students were happy with the policy because it allowed them to focus. I’m grateful to Chris for spurring me to make this change.

But from my experience, allowing phones anywhere in school is detrimental. I’ll never forget one afternoon as I was leaving school: I saw one of our girls’ varsity sports teams sitting on the floor in a circle. No one said a word because they were all on their phones.

CHRIS: I’ll second what Matt said about COVID and share another example. In the spring of 2022, I stopped a class of almost 30 juniors a little early. Their phones were in the caddy, so they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to socialize in person. Pre-phones, you wouldn’t have been able to hear yourself think in a room of juniors in the spring.

EDITORS: Tell us a little more about the challenges you faced before the bell-to-bell ban.

CHRIS: As union president, I asked for a cellphone ban for three years. Starting in September 2024, we implemented a high school policy during class time, but that only addressed academics. Students also need to be off their phones between classes and at lunch for their social and emotional development and wellness. Before this year, hallways were quiet, cafeterias were quiet. Everyone sat around the table eating their food, looking at their phones. Children aren’t developing their attention spans. They are so used to these 3- to 30-second TikToks that we can no longer show full-length videos.

MATT: I agree. My philosophy as a teacher has been that although I’m here to teach English, my number one job is to be a positive role model and foster character education. After COVID, there was something different. Kids lacked the ability to socialize, and at times it seemed like they lacked empathy and compassion. It has gotten better over the past few years, but we still have a lot to do teaching them to be good human beings.

My master’s is in educational technology. Earlier in my career, I remember how exciting it was to get my first laptop cart and then to upgrade to each student having a Chromebook they could bring home. We needed them during the pandemic, but I’ve gone the opposite direction recently. We mostly use pencil and paper, and we engage in small- and large-group discussions. I have to teach students things like how to show that they are paying attention—to have the courtesy of looking at the speaker.

CHRIS: I see teachers using technology every day because we restructured our pedagogy during COVID, but I also have gone back to pencil and paper. I think this transition with the bell-to-bell law in New York state is difficult for current high school students because we haven’t been very good at explaining the real purpose and the research behind it to the students. We haven’t explained the benefits of socializing in person and developing their verbal communication academically and socially.

KEVIN: Our school district provides every student a laptop. They haven’t been a distraction because we also have software called Lightspeed Classroom that allows teachers to see and control what students are doing on their laptops. Teachers can display students’ screens on their presentation boards, so everyone knows immediately if a student has, say, hopped on websites other than what the teacher has asked them to use.

MATT: That’s a great idea.

KEVIN: Yes, it’s very helpful, but before the bell-to-bell ban, phones remained a challenge. Looking at this from the teachers’ perspective, it’s impossible to compete with kids’ favorite apps. What do you do when a student keeps taking their phone out? Do you take the phone? Well, it’s a $1,000 item. Many of my members didn’t want that responsibility.

Using their own money, some teachers bought shoe organizers to have a dedicated place for phone storage. But what if it falls and screens crack? Others bought charging stations, which the students thought were cool, though charging effectively left them phone-free for that class period.

Teachers had to resort to tricks like this because we had no support from administration and thus no mechanism to take a phone away from a child or to handle a parent who was upset about their child’s phone being taken during class. Understandably, many teachers gave up.

CHRIS: I agree that teachers can’t compete with apps, and I also had many members who didn’t want the responsibility of taking students’ phones. As I’ve tried to build support for phone bans over the years, many people outside the classroom, like administrators and parents, have said that educators have to teach good behavior, including putting phones away during class. I’d tell them that I agree 99 percent of the time—we do a lot of character education—but this is different. Phones are addictive; we have to think of them like nicotine.

EDITORS: Getting legislation passed is never easy. How did you and NYSUT contribute to winning the bell-to-bell ban?

KEVIN: NYSUT’s president, Melinda Person, led this charge. From listening to educators across New York, she knew that students’ academic, social, and emotional development were being harmed. After some initial efforts to share what she was hearing, Melinda convened a really powerful conference in September 2024 called Disconnected that lifted the voices of educators, parents, students, and healthcare and law enforcement professionals. To me, that conference felt like a turning point. Many members of NYSUT’s board of directors agreed, so we planned a series of regional Disconnected conferences to draw more people into the fight to remove cellphones and related devices from the school day.

By January 2025, Melinda had secured the support of New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, and by March we were hosting our Disconnected conference on Long Island. Wanting to ensure as much support as possible, we brought many teachers, administrators, local legislators, and students to our regional conference, and some of my students spoke. That day, a superintendent told me, “I wasn’t going to come. I have a K–8 district, and we’ve got this under control. But thank you for bringing me to the conference because I see that I have to be part of the solution.” He saw that every district has to unify; if we all go dark during the school day, then students don’t have anyone to communicate with, making implementation easier in the places where phones have been a problem.

One added benefit of the Disconnected conference in September was that I met with representatives from Yondr, which sells secure pouches for students’ phones. They provided samples for my district, and soon I had support from the middle and high school principals and the PTA. Most parents I spoke with believed their kids weren’t on their phones at school, but they were concerned about safety. The Yondr pouches help because parents can keep their child’s location app on. So if we evacuate the school, we won’t open the pouches until everyone is safe, but parents can still track where their children are going.

Parents’ fears were also alleviated by law enforcement. Many officers have explained that it is safer for students to not be distracted during emergencies. Students and educators need to give their full attention to following the officers’ directions. In addition, students texting parents during an emergency can slow down the response. If parents are rushing to the scene, then emergency vehicles may get stuck in traffic.

After our regional conference, it seemed like everyone agreed that we had to create distraction-free schools even if the legislation didn’t pass. Still, we thought the statewide ban was the best strategy, so many of my members wrote letters to their representatives and advocated for the ban on social media.

CHRIS: That was a great summary, so I’ll just add that both Matt and I spoke about our experiences at a regional Disconnected conference led by NYSUT and President Person, and in March of 2025 we had a meeting of local legislators at NYSUT’s Tarrytown regional office. Winning over parents in my area was fairly easy at first, but this year the concern around contacting their children during the school day continued. As in Kevin’s district, their main concern was contacting their children during a crisis. We didn’t buy Yondr pouches, but establishing communications policies just like in the pre-cellphone era was sufficient to address concerns.

MATT: One last thing: Every year NYSUT hosts an advocacy day in Albany called Committee of 100 when educators from around the state speak to legislators at the capitol, and this became one of our talking points during the last couple of years. As for parents, like Chris’s district, we don’t have Yondr pouches, but all our families needed was a clear communications plan for emergencies.

EDITORS: How is this school year different, now that the bell-to-bell ban is being implemented?

MATT: It’s going really well—much to our surprise, honestly. Kids are being kids again. I’ve had very few issues with students trying to sneak peeks at their phones. Students see it as far more serious when I tell them they aren’t just breaking a school rule, they are breaking a state law.

One great thing about teaching in a small school is that I teach every single student in eighth grade, and since we have all grades in one building, high schoolers come back to visit me. Some 10th-graders had lunch in my room recently, and they asked if I had playing cards. I searched in the back of my desk and found some Harry Potter playing cards that are about 20 years old. The students thought they were new because no one had touched them in many years. For me, it was great to see these 10th-graders laughing and playing cards.

And, in contrast to Chris’s silent class years ago, I recently had a class become rambunctious. In my college-credit speech class with seniors, we wrapped up a few minutes early. I had to respond to an email, and soon the class was incredibly loud. I stopped myself from yelling at them, realizing this was a wonderful moment. They were acting like regular teenagers.

KEVIN: It’s going great in my district too. This past summer, the superintendent and I met with the high school senior class president and the general organization (i.e., student government) president to get their input on what they needed for this transition. They requested cards, Jenga, and board games in the cafeteria, along with allowing more students to leave the lunchroom to go to the library. They also wanted a basketball court. It’s important to us to honor student voice, so we did all three. The games and policy change were in place at the beginning of the school year, and the basketball court was finished in November.

Throughout the fall, I met with high school students about this change. Some thought it was terrible, but most said it wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be. I think that doing this statewide has been crucial; students aren’t missing anything because no one has a phone during the day.

In the beginning of the school year, some students altered their Yondr pouches by cutting a line in the bottom to slide their phone out or shoving bits of eraser into the locking mechanism so it didn’t hold well. We charged them $35 for each pouch they tampered with, so those efforts ended quickly.

CHRIS: Walking around the common areas like the cafeteria, the flagpoles (which are a popular hangout when the weather is good), and the library, I see groups of students in conversations—not looking at screens. That wouldn’t have happened last year. So it’s going well for us overall, but I’m advocating for a change to our district phone storage policy to eliminate backpacks as storage at the high school, because the distraction and temptation are still by their sides. The number of requests for hall passes and bathroom breaks has skyrocketed. I guarantee it has to do with our cellphone policy, and it won’t get better until we switch from backpacks to lockers.

KEVIN: I checked on requests to go to the bathroom also; ours have stayed pretty much the same. We would see an increase in bathroom requests if students were using that excuse to look at their phones. I also surveyed my members in October, asking how often they had to address a student with a cellphone. The vast majority—196 members—said one student or fewer per day. Only 10 members said they had to deal with one or more per day. Even better, 65 percent said they noticed a moderate or significant increase in engagement due to the phone ban. From what I’ve seen and from talking to my members, students are talking more, looking up more, and making more eye contact. The Yondr pouches and the fact that no student has their phone seem to be working.

My new goal as a union president is to reduce the impact of phones on my members. Before smartphones, we didn’t have apps like ParentSquare, so all communication with parents and caregivers was either on the telephone or written. When teachers left work, they left work. We’d often bring home a pile of papers to grade to give students feedback, but we could do that while we sat at the doctor’s office or our kid’s baseball game.

Now, unfortunately, teachers’ lives are being controlled by smartphones with communication apps; parents don’t always recognize the end of the workday for teachers. So as we move to distraction-free classrooms because of the bell-to-bell cellphone ban, I’m trying to also encourage my members to set boundaries with parents and caregivers. Just like we’re creating distraction-free classrooms, we need to set aside distraction-free family time after work.

MATT: I agree. I’ve always encouraged my members to protect their time away from work. But I have to learn to take my own advice. I recently mentioned to other local union presidents that I’m fortunate to have a long commute because that’s when I am on the phone doing much of my work as president. Then one asked, “But should that be the expectation that as you’re driving home, you have to be making these phone calls that really should be done as part of your work?” It made me think.

My New Year’s resolution for 2025 was to focus on my daughter when I got home from work. Too often, I’d be on my phone trying to respond to messages while playing with her. Last spring, when she was in preschool, she told me: “No phones allowed here. No phones allowed.” After that, I put my phone in my bedroom and turned the sound off—but I would still be tempted to check it. Now I leave it where I don’t have access to it for the few precious hours before she starts getting ready for bed.

CHRIS: I love when I hit traffic on a Thursday afternoon and it takes me an hour and a half to get home because I can fit in more conversations and resolve more issues. But shutting it down is important for all of us, especially our students, to protect our mental health. As union presidents and as teachers, it’s really tough, but we have to disconnect too. Our district also uses ParentSquare. I encourage the teachers who choose to use it to set up filters where messages that come in after a certain hour in the evening will be held until the morning.

For children and adults, our approach to smartphones today reminds me of seat belt use about 40 years ago, when New York state passed and enforced seat belt laws. Many people may have been hesitant with this change and requirement, but I think we’re going to look back on this and wonder why we ever let young people have smartphones and why we as adults have allowed them to take so much of our time and attention. As a New York educator and NYSUT member, I’m very happy that this bell-to-bell state law was led by NYSUT President Melinda Person through her continued advocacy making sure that we do right for kids and for teachers.

MATT: I’ll second that. I’m extremely proud of the work we’ve done as NYSUT. When I first heard we were tackling this, I wasn’t sure if we could win. But Melinda kept pushing it, and she gave us as local presidents the strength to push it in our communities. I’m proud to be a small part of this because it is clearly benefiting our students.                 

[Photos by Bruce Gilbert]