When the province introduced new cell phone use policies before the new school year, Saskatchewan school divisions had a short window to enact policies.
Cell phones will not be permitted during class time across K-12 schools in Saskatchewan starting in the 2024-25 school year. Because of the announcement by the province the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division completed changes to administration policy governing technology use. The changes were part of the consent agenda and passed by the board during their regular meeting on Monday.
Sask. Rivers Superintendent Garrette Tebay said that at the division level the changes seem to be going well.
“All of our schools have taken the policy and created systems that work for their school in their local context without going past those non-negotiables that are written in policy,” Tebay said.
These new measures apply to all Kindergarten to Grade 12 schools in the province. In Grades 9 to 12, teachers can seek an exemption from administration to allow cell phone use by students during class when needed for a specific instructional purpose.
According to Tebay, students can already use devices if appropriate and approved by administration.
“Teachers can ask for an exemption for a certain activity or a certain reason and they can do that through their principal or individual students can work through an exemption process as well as part of our inclusive education program,” Tebay said.
“If we have a student that has relied on a personal device to be their communication device for several years, we’re not going to take that away from them,” she added.
Tebay said the major change to the administrative procedure was the demand that instructional time remain a space where distractions like cell phones are removed.
“Every school kind of had a different approach to it,” she explained. “Often every classroom had different approaches to it based on how teachers used technology as part of their instructional practice and so this has now just created the same expectation across the board.”
Tebay explained that any time you change something for adolescents and teenagers, they will have questions and frustrations, particularly when it comes to something like technology use.
“Youth use technology in very different ways than we did growing up and so those initial frustrations were definitely there, but as we work through those our hope as a division—as I assume is the hope of the province—is that instruction is going to improve because of kids being able to give their full attention to their learning.”
Tebay said it is all part of changing routines. For example, students have to put their cell phones into storage during class time and pick them up after before going to the next class.
“Our students still have the opportunity to check their phones at breaks and lunchtime,” Tebay said. “They’ve got the opportunity to be on their phones after school, so it’s just a matter of changing their practice and adjusting to that new routine.”
