Phone-Free School Day Brings Energy and Focus

Reprinted from Traditions, Summer 2025
August 4, 2025

The 2024-25 school year was loud — in the best possible way.

The new Cretin-Derham Hall policy launched this year to be phone-free during the school day has numerous benefits, but President Jeb Myers always points to the one thing that everyone notices — the energy and the sound of students talking to one another!

“When you walk down the hallways or pop into the cafeteria, the new noise level is happy and powerful,” explained Myers. “With the phone not available, we are talking to each other rather than scrolling on our phones.”

After several years of research with our faculty, parents, students, and assessing the options experiencing success in educational environments, CDH established a new cell phone policy in 2024-25 which requires students to lock their phones in a Yondr pouch at the beginning of the school day. Students keep their Yondr pouches in their backpacks until the end of the school day and then unlock their pouches at school exits when they leave the building.

“Our new phone policy that includes the use of Yondr pouches during the school year has been overwhelmingly successful,” noted Amy Bellus ’90, Assistant Principal. “Teachers have expressed that their classrooms are more focused and interactive. Students are more engaged with one another as well, especially during lunch and passing time. And, the feedback we’ve received from parents/guardians has been overwhelmingly positive and even students have reported that they are able to get more done during the school day and have less to catch up on when they go home. The energy in the school is more positive.”

Mona Passman, Principal is also grateful to the parents who helped inform this policy change through surveys and discussions. In her experience, parents are reporting that they are seeing improved academic outcomes and they are grateful that CDH took this step to keep the phones away during the school day.

Yondr reports that 35 schools/districts in Minnesota are using their pouches for creating phone-free learning environments, and that number is growing.