This week, Mr. Ryan Knoblock’s sophomore AVID class participated in a “no phone day” where students and Knoblock had to turn in their phones at the beginning of the day and got them returned to them at the end of the school day.

Knoblock got the idea to do this from Mr. Ryan Pace’s AVID class. He has done it for the past four years.

Pace stated, “I look around and everybody in the restaurant is on their phone. And I started thinking about my AVUD class, and I was like, well, I wonder how much we’re on our phones.”

The purpose is to test their will, just for a day. The students are given a worksheet to fill out throughout the day where they rate how they’re feeling and why. It was a pattern that at the beginning of the day, students weren’t too happy about it, and rated how they felt as ones and twos, and as the day progressed, the ratings did as well. By the end of the day without phones, they were rating how they felt as fours and fives. 

Sophomore Araalia Ramirez stated before the “no phone day”, “I’m not excited at all…it’s gonna feel like a major loss.” 

Knoblock’s AVID class wasn’t necessarily excited for it, but they were going along with it. 

Sophomore Josh Jesser stated, “I’m kind of excited, it’s a good opportunity to get off my devices and focus on more important things.”

Throughout the past couple years of doing it, students have created goals for themselves in the future for lowering their phone usage and having more self discipline in general. 

Pace stated, “It’s not bad per se, it’s just overdone. So we all put our phones away.”