Away For The Day | Latest News - Teacher rejoices over impact of school cellphone bans

As students go back to school this month, many will make the return under new state cellphone bans — limiting student phone use during school hours.

One teacher says he is already reaping the benefits of his school’s cellphone ban and enjoying the positive impact he believes new policies are having on his students.

In nearly a decade of teaching, this is the first year his Alabama school adopted a total ban on student cellphone use, explained the history teacher, who goes by the name jonstertruck on social media and published a trilogy of sci-fi novels under the name J.W. Buchwalter.

“Today, all of my students — 100% of them — took notes in my class, did their assignment, asked for help when they got stuck and turned it in," Buchwalter said in a TikTok clip.

“And then when they were done, they talked to each other,” he continued. “Was it this easy the whole time? ... I have been pulling my hair out for, like, eight years. Has it been this easy of a solution the whole time?”

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Oelke said that she had previously worked at a school with a zero-tolerance cell phone policy. “It was absolutely one of the best teaching years that I have had in over a decade,” Oelke said.

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