High school teacher sick of pupils using their cell phones – so insists they lock them up

Attempting to focus and learn at school when everyone else is playing with their cell phone is not easy.

Photography teacher Michael Lee saw that his students were rushing their work so they could play on their cell phones. He knows that photography takes time and cannot be done properly if it’s rushed.

So he brought something into the school that nobody had seen before and decided to try a new tactic

 

He noticed that his pupils were not focusing on their school work and were constantly distracted by the lure of their cell phones.

“I just needed to do something different,” said Michael Lee, who teaches at Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, Washington.

Cell phone locker

So Michael decided to do something about it.

“My overall goal was to give kids an opportunity to engage in what they’re doing,” Michael told KREM-TV. “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.”

So Michael bought a cell phone locker and insists his pupils’ phones are locked away safely at the beginning of his class. They can even charge them while they’re locked away. After the lesson is over the phones are returned.

mobile, mobile bowl, teacher, classroom
Michael’s cell phone cabinet

No complaints

He is pleased with how the students are focusing more in his class and he said they don’t even complain about the new system.

“No one has said to me, ‘Mr. Lee, can I please not lock up my phone?’ They’ll just walk in, lock it up,” Michael said. “They get to work, and that’s exactly the intention of it.”

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