Yondr At Barnard, Phones Out Of Sight

When Barnard School eighth-graders Grace Sherman and Nathaly Ynoa Martinez and Owen Agba arrived at school Friday morning, they put their smartphones in magnetically sealed pouches — which they likely wouldn’t unlock until the end of the day. 

After participating in a year-long experiment in phone-free classrooms, they looked forward to another day of in-person learning and socializing with friends, unmired by the distractions of TikTok and Instagram. Meanwhile, their governor and one of their U.S. senators popped into their school to learn about how that’s all going.

Sherman, Martinez, and Agba all attend the 170 Derby Ave. magnet PreK‑8 school.

Last year, Barnard became the first school in the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district to adopt Yondr pouches, a technological intervention designed to cut down on phone use during the school day. 

That technology has become increasingly popular in cities and states across the country that are looking to cut down on the distractions and the influences of social media at school. NHPS is considering rolling out Yondr pouches to other middle schools in the district, following Barnard’s lead.

Connecticut’s education department, meanwhile, recently issued guidance advising — but not requiring — elementary and middle schools across the state to ban smartphone use at school.

Well before the state handed down that suggestion, Barnard School Principal Stephanie Skiba brought Yondr pouches into her building last year.

All fifth through eighth graders at Barnard are required to put their phones in Yondr pouches when they walk through the school’s front doors. They can then carry the sealed-away phones, in the pouches, in their pockets or bags over the course of the day. Students cannot access their phones again until they leave school after 3 p.m., or if they go to the school’s front office and, with teachers’ and staff permission, unlock the pouches so they can temporarily use their phones to, for example, call their parents. 

Skiba said she recognized that phones, especially social media, were devouring way too much of her students’ attention during the school day. So she decided to spend school funds buying a few hundred Yondr pouches at around $20 apiece for her middle school-aged students.

During an interview Friday before a politician-led roundtable about the federal Kids Online Safety Act, Skiba and more than half a dozen Barnard eighth graders spoke with the Independent about how successful these phone-hiding devices have been so far. 

“We saw a drastic change in student engagement and behavior,” Skiba said. Students interacted and talked more with one another, in class and in the cafeteria. Their grades went up. They’re more focused on learning. There’s ​“no more TikToking while walking through the halls.”

“It just changed the climate,” she said.

Before the school adopted these pouches for last year’s pilot, she said, ​“the cellphone use in general was not viable.” So much has changed in a year — and the school has decided to continue to require fifth through eighth graders to use Yondr pouches this school year, too. (While phones are largely out of sight during the school day, Skiba said, some multilingual students still use school-provided tablets for, say, translation purposes in the classroom.)

Every student the Independent spoke with agreed with Skiba, even if they also had constructive criticism about how better to roll out Yondr pouches districtwide.

“It helps us focus more,” Sherman said, by taking away the distracting appeal of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling in between classes.

Fellow eighth grader Omar Mushtaq agreed. He warned that, ​“if you take something away from someone, they want it more.” That’s human nature. But, from his observations of how Yondr pouches have worked among his peers (he himself doesn’t have a phone), most students have gotten over that initial increased longing for stored-away phones — and are now just used to it.

“I just got used to it,” Martinez agreed. Plus, she noted, it’s helped with her grades. Sherman said she went from getting C’s in some of her classes to now getting A’s. The Yondr pouches aren’t the sole reason for that improvement, she said, but they certainly helped.

Between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m., eight Barnard eighth graders — including Mushtaq, Martinez, Sherman, and Agba — sat in a U‑shape arrangement of tables alongside Principal Skiba, U.S. Sen. Ricard Blumenthal, Gov. Ned Lamont, NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón, and Mayor Justin Elicker, and before a phalanx of a dozen TV news cameras.

While some reporters and political press aides fiddled with their phones — to take notes or scroll through Twitter (this reporter promises, he only looked at his phone once. Or twice. But it was buzzing!) — the students sat with their phone-free hands before them, blowing the minds of the adults around them with their precious, articulate insights about how phones affect kids in schools.

The stated purpose of the politician-student discussion was the U.S. Senate’s recent passage of the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill championed by Blumenthal that seeks to hold big social media companies accountable for potential harms their products might cause young people.

Most of the hourlong conversation, however, proved to be about Barnard’s year-long pilot with Yondr pouches — and how students have found that experiment to be, overall, quite successful.

Without phones in everyone’s hands all the time, Mushtaq said, ​“We’ve just got to sit down and listen” in class. He also praised the technology for allowing kids to carry around their phones, but not use them, during the day. That’s better than requiring that phones be put in a central office or bucket or somewhere out of reach, he said. ​“You feel like you still have a choice,” and you can still reach out to a teacher to ask for the pouch to be unlocked if you really need to use it.

Most of the 13-year-olds at the table said they got their first smartphones at around age 9. Many said their parents impose restrictions — around social media use, around the amount of time or type of apps they can use. But, as Blumenthal pointed out, young people often can find a way around those rules.

Mushtaq articulated one of the more heartbreakingly precise explanations for why he and his peers are drawn to social media at all, and why some kind of intervention — by schools, by government, by parents — is necessary.

“Most young kids, this includes me, want to belong. They don’t want to be the odd one out.” Apps like TikTok and Instagram can offer that sense of belonging. And increasingly bright and loud apps are designed to appeal, and even be addictive, as they offer this mediated sense of belonging.

The problem, he noted, is that the companies that build these phones and apps are sometimes ​“predator.”

“They try to give the promises of being included.” But their motivations are often much baser. Really, they want money through advertisements — and eyeballs on those advertisement. It’s almost like they ​“steal all your money away without you really knowing.”

Mayor Elicker asked the students if they think it would be a good idea for the district to roll out Yondr pouches at all schools in New Haven.

Each student said yes. But, as Martinez and Mushtaq cautioned, the district should do it gradually. They said when they were first told as seventh graders, last year, that everyone had to use Yondr pouches all at once and right away, they were caught off guard. There was a bumpy adjustment period. Prepare students at schools across the city and the adoption should be easier, they said.

But, they all agreed, it’s a good idea. New Haven should do it.