(Editor’s Note: Michael Anderson is the high school principal at Colegio Menor. Anderson has been gracious enough to provide us with his thoughts on the controversial decision to limit cell phone usage in the classroom.)

Imagine the look on Fiorella Tapia and Alegria Davila’s faces when I tell them the grade-level with the fewest cell phone strikes will get to pick their Coreografia theme first. 

These are the kinds of ideas I come up with when I am running around school collecting students and their phones — trying to think of a creative way to get students to regulate the phone usage through positive peer pressure, rather than the threat of them losing their phone and having their parents called.  

I never wanted to take the phones away from high school students, nor do I see it as a long-term solution. Teachers, parents, and even students have all said what a problem phone addiction is for our youth.  

I have had many students tell me they did not mean to take their phone out in class, it is simply such an instinctive action that they do not even think about what they are doing. One student even told me, “Michael, it is like my phone is a part of my hand.”  

Countless students have told me we no longer need the cellphone policy and that I should stop taking phones away. For this reason, Anabella and I have decided to delete any strikes past the first strike.

Let’s see how much we have learned and how many students have learned to self-regulate. Maybe there will be a day when I stop receiving cell phone violations in my email and we can get to a place where we no longer need the policy.  

Now that we seem to be headed in the right direction with cell phones, what do you think I should have next as a major focus? I am thinking AirPods. What do you think?  

While I do not believe our students are trying to prioritize the latest Bad Bunny album drop over a simple morning salutation, when I (or any other adult) is completely ignored because you are listening to your ear buds, this is the perception you convey.  

What if our graduating seniors go to their first college class and they sit down on day one with their AirPods in their ears? What message does this send their new professor?

It appears that whatever you are listening to in your ears is more important than what the professor has to share.  

Maybe soon we need to be an air pod free school…