A growing issue in the U.S. school system is keeping students engaged throughout a lesson. WVHS has faced a similar issue recently, teachers have been struggling to keep students focused for the full duration of a 90-minute block period. The school is consistently looking for a schoolwide method to solve this issue.

The systematic reason that many will point to as the root of this issue is phones. Their negative effects stretch beyond simply their pull on students in the classroom. Phones and social media as a whole have drastically lessened the teen population’s attention span. The pandemic and online school have only heightened this issue as students were locked up inside endlessly scrolling through social media out of boredom. “Online school definitely worsened my abilities as a student,” says freshman Jackson Bonn-Savage.

This brings the following question of how can WVHS better engage students when dealing with a lack of attention span? The simple answer, but controversial, is to take students’ phones away from them into the “phone wall.” This policy, however, can be very much irritating for some students; not everyone may agree to it because they cannot access their phones quickly in cases of emergency and such. “I dislike the phone wall because I often use my phone for school-related activities,” states junior Isaiah Ulrich. But taking phones away may serve as a strong solution because of the huge increase in attention received from students when they do not have their phones. 

Though, the significant problem still at hand is taking students’ phones away because not everyone wants to do so. This could be resolved if students started being warier of the way they use their phones during class, for example, not pulling it out consecutively throughout class or when the teacher is explaining something. If you don’t want your phone to be taken away from the teacher, then you should be careful and smart when you use it during class.