Every 50 minutes, an electronic bell reverberates through Roaring Fork High School (RFHS). Students stand and shove papers into their backpacks before crowding by the door. They aren’t necessarily eager to leave the classroom, but rather itching to be reconnected with the digital world. They encircle the three-foot-tall blue and yellow pocket system, which stands next to the door and holds each of their cell phones, reaching as frantically as a child might in a candy store.
“Thats how humans work,” said Edward Danahey, a teacher at the school responsible for introducing the pocket system there. “You can tell people something is bad for them all day, but if it makes them happy, it doesn’t matter.”
After graduating from Colorado Mesa University in 2021, Danahey started his career as a student-teacher in Fruita. “They had a huge issue with phones,” he told The Sopris Stars. “I figured that once I started teaching, I [would have] control of the classroom.” Regardless of his new role, however, the students persisted.
Danahey had also previously been very frustrated by the use of technology in college. “Being in a room full of adults who are supposed to be leaders and they are checking their phone[s] while a professor is talking is just so lame,” he said. “So I was, like, ‘You know what? I’m going to be really, really harsh and strict about the phone policy and set really clear expectations.’”
Danahey’s school in Fruita had already implemented the pocket policy by the time he started working there. The issue wasn’t a lack of regulations, but rather the extent to which they were enforced. Having eventually found a way to make the pocket policy in Fruita successful, Danahey chose to introduce it in his classroom at RFHS as well, which sparked a trend.
“I had administrators coming into my room and reviewing my [phone] policy during that year because they were, like, ‘Wow, this guy’s a new teacher [and] his phone policy is effective.’” He was then set on expanding the policy schoolwide.
“I went and talked to the dean here,” he said, “and we put in the phone policy, I believe at the end of the 2021-2022 year.”
At Roaring Fork, Danahey is known for valuing the maturity of his students. He believes that any student who is capable of completing a college level AP course should be treated as such. Danahey has had to find a balance between allowing students to make their own choices and stepping in to help make those decisions when it’s called for.
“It’s one thing to have autonomy … but phones are intentionally designed to be addictive,” he said.
“The dirty secret is if you walked into class every day and you just said, ‘I don’t have a cell phone,’ I would just trust you because that is me treating you like an adult,” Danahey said. .
When asked to share a glimpse into his own technology use, Danahey shared the screentime on his iPhone. He averaged 2 hours, 12 minutes daily.
“I think it’s pretty bad actually.” He proceeded to do some complex mental math and declared with disgust, “I don’t want to embarrass myself here, but that’s like 6% of my day on my phone, right?”
Regardless of his conviction, Danahey admitted that “phones have made us more connected than we’ve ever been, for better or worse.”
“It’s just like everything in life,” he said. “It should be used in moderation.”
Isaac Moore, a teacher at Basalt High School, has used the same pocket policy as Danahey, but instead of draping it over the classroom door he uses a rolling whiteboard. All of the teachers at RFHS have now adopted Moore’s method.
When it came to his contribution to the pocket policy, Danahey said he didn’t deserve all of the credit. “It was all of the hard-working teachers here at RFHS that made these agreements,” he said. “I think that’s like the thesis: people coming together to make strong lasting decisions.”