Last spring, Principal Kimberly Martin announced the end of the Yondr bag policy at Wilson. However, some teachers have decided to continue using the bags due to the positive impact they’ve seen in their classrooms.

Many teachers have noticed fewer distractions and an easier time managing phone usage with Yondr bags. “Two years ago I probably spent five to 10 minutes a class period just getting on kids’ cases about their phones, and that’s not a good use of class time,” math teacher Jeremy Singer said. “[Yondr] reduced a lot of the ‘I’m going to look at my phone every three minutes,’ which was a pain.”

“When I compared last year’s students with the students from the year before, I felt like their testing performances and AP scores increased,” math teacher Qi Guo said. “I can assume [it’s due to Yondr bags] because that’s the only difference in my instruction.”

Since Wilson no longer supplies the bags, teachers requested leftovers to use this school year. “I was reaching out to the administration to see if there were some leftovers from last year, we were told there were…and we were allowed to keep using them,” Guo said.

The Yondr bag policy was instituted at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year in an attempt to combat phone usage during school. After the one year pilot was up, the Wilson Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) decided not to renew the contract for the 2019-20 school year. 

Although Wilson may have officially ended the Yondr bag policy, it lives on in the classrooms of teachers like Guo and Singer. “It’s up to the teachers this year,” Guo said.