Lee County School District implemented a new initiative to learning for all K-12 schools in the district when launching their ‘Unplugged’ campaign in December of 2025.
Three Oaks Middle School has put this new initiative into practice — no phones in the classroom and tech-free days of traditional learning.
How does this different avenue to learning benefit adolescent students in the classroom and better prepare them to be well-rounded individuals beyond the classroom?
“Of course, it's our responsibility to teach the kids skills to be successful in standardized testing,” Lisa Dolan, Three Oaks Middle School eighth grade English Language Arts teacher, said. “However, I think more than that, we need to make good people, and through effective communication, without the computers, we can do a better job with that.”
Before Lee County launched its ‘Unplugged’ campaign, Three Oaks Middle School already had a no-phone policy in its school system. The new initiative further underscored the importance of separating students from their phones and promoted a learning system that limits tech use in their classrooms.
Less screen time in the classroom creates more opportunity for student engagement. In an ever-growing world of technology, the richness of constant face-to-face interaction captures so much more than a simple text message ever could.
This constant communication practice in the classroom is essential to every aspect of life outside of school.
“As you talk to people, you naturally learn how to communicate and how to interact,” Kyle Strom, father of two Lee County students, said. “You learn, good confrontation. You experience, face-to-face. So I think anything that you're doing that the phone is not present and you're communicating with friends, teachers, or parents is a good thing.”
“It's life skills that you're always going to use, and if you don't develop them at a young age, by the time you get to our age, it kind of puts you behind the game, and then it makes it hard to sometimes get a job, maybe have relationships, friendships,” Callie Strom, mother of two Lee County students said. “So, I mean, it affects a lot, which makes it super important in the school systems.”
Middle school students are at one of the most developmental stages of their lives, when they begin to discover their sense of self throughout their three years of junior high.
Three Oaks Middle School’s ultimate goal with this new initiative is to increase peer interaction and enhance student engagement, with teachers facilitating instruction for student-led discussions.
“When you reduce or when you just remove all technology, not only does it allow students to be patient with their understanding and knowledge, but it gives them a chance to create, the creativity to think beyond themselves, and really, that's when you have a great understanding of what this scholar knows in reality?” Three Oaks Middle School principal Forrest Walker Jr. said.
Walker said the students learn more from one another. Simply putting students behind the screen hinders their ability to work through their thoughts and write out their understanding on paper.
“With the computer system is it's one thing to, you know, type, but we're losing that effectiveness of writing out our thoughts, writing out the responses,” Walker said. “It's easy to come up with an answer on a computer quickly, but when you do multi-step and multi-systems work, and you work out equations, and you write essays, those things take time. So ultimately, this ‘Unplugged’ is reducing that level of screen time and putting some actual thought into the process.”
ELA teacher Dolan said parents have asked her if their kids will be on computers all day long in class. With the new ‘Unplugged’ campaign, parents can be reassured that screen time in class is limited and that their kids are learning in a school system similar to the one they grew up in.
“In my class, I use technology as a tool,” Dolan said. “I don't use it as a teaching device. I love to teach. That's what I went to school to do. I'm an English teacher, and I know literature, and I know grammar, and that's what I do. So why would I give up what I work so hard for, for a piece of plastic? I'm just not okay with that.”
Dolan said she has watched her students enjoy tactile tasks and working with their classmates. She said she has even watched her students take in the smell of new books as they crack the spines and flip through the pages.
“I have always found that when kids have an opportunity to do something more creative and more engaging, they can kick ideas off of each other, and they can learn things at a deeper level,” Dolan said. “When they know they have to physically hand their work in, they take more pride in it.”
It is imperative that students learn in a school system where their authentic voices and thoughts are represented, as this enhances their capacity to learn outside of the various tabs on their computers.
“Our brains are made to be used,” Kyle Strom said. “They're made to think, and that's how it stays young. And a lot of times, this technology we have is so self-doing that we don't really need to do or think a whole lot.”
With less screen time, these students are no longer distracted by access to the outside world through tech; instead, their focus is solely on their academics and their ability to think.
“The act of socialization builds stamina with constant use of vocabulary, constant use of enunciating different types of words, whether it's academia or common conversations,” principal Walker said. “It prepares them for when they go before a small or grand audience, to be confident in what they know and what they've retained, as it relates to just having generalized conversations with friends or getting information from informational texts or learning from academic coursework.”
Not only has this new ‘Unplugged’ initiative reshaped classroom culture for these students, but it has also allowed teachers like Mrs. Dolan to remain creative and passionate about what they do for their students' success.
“I think computers have kind of taken away some of what we had for teaching,” Dolan said. “I find that you can very quickly become complacent if you know that everything is right there. And I'm hoping, now that we have these tech-free days, that more teachers will be encouraged to find that creativity that they used to have and use it to make more engaging lessons and to hone in on their art to find what that passion for teaching means to them.”
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.
