Kids ditch phones and focus in this class

La Conner high school teacher Erin Lisser teaches students to “keep calm and carry on.” She’s got a poster of the popular saying with its iconic red background and decorative crown hanging in her classroom. It’s an image that’s commonly found on merchandise and online memes.

But unlike many, her students actually understand where the World War II propaganda slogan originated, thanks to her U.S. History, American Government and Current World Problems classes.

Lisser is on her second year of teaching in La Conner, after moving to Skagit County from Portland, Oregon, where she was raised. She’s taught for 12 years overall, and earned her master’s degree from the University of Oregon. Already, she’s gotten involved in La Conner outside the classroom by becoming the students’ ASB Advisor and helping to run the school’s leadership team.

For her, teaching is somewhat like a science experiment—she’s constantly testing what works with children and what doesn’t, and how they respond to new approaches. She said loves learning about behavioral neuroscience, how the brain works and why people do the things they do, often approaching classroom projects with a “brain science” mentality.

Students who have Lisser as a teacher experience the cell-phone guardian, “Gertrude,” an affectionately named, undecorated storage space where Lisser often asks them to put their phones during class time.

“Cell phones are just the biggest distraction in all of our lives these days,” she said. “It’s so cool, because just now the science is starting to come out. Teachers were on the front line—they knew that cell phones are a distraction, but no one would listen to us.”

Lisser introduces Gertrude to each class by citing the numbers: “college students check their cellphones roughly 11 times per class and spend 20 percent of class on their phones, unrelated to their learning,”—figures that she says shock the kids. Last year, she wrote an op-ed piece for the Seattle Times, titled, “I make students check their phones at the door,” in response to another letter with an opinion that made her angry, she said—that millennials are getting dumber. She argues that millennials are getting distracted.

The hanging pockets leave the phones easily visible and Gertrude has positive connotations, Lisser said, unlike the old approach of confiscating phones to a teacher’s desk.

“It’s neutral,” she said, and popular enough that students voluntarily give up their phones when they enter the room.

“I love how drab Gertrude is,” she said, laughing. “She’s kind of out of date, not very fashionable, but she loves you and she’ll hold your phone… It’s amazing how the smallest things psychologically work versus other things. And you’ve just got to keep figuring out what that thing is,” she said.

Right now, she’s in the process of “calming” her room, decreasing visual clutter.

“A kid said today, ‘can we keep the lights off? It’s so much more calming.’ And I said I totally agree,” she said. “I think that’s super important—having a calm place to learn, visually and auditorily.”

Outside the classroom, Lisser’s hobbies include photography, running and following her and her husband’s favorite soccer team—The Seattle Sounders.

What would she want parents to know about her?

“That tough love is love,” she said, “and that having high expectations causes kids to rise.”

She hopes her students understand the reasons behind her teaching methods, she said, and that they are able to take her “‘ah-ha’ life skills” into the real world. Lisser wants them to understand modern lessons from the pages of their history books.

“I would love my kids to walk away feeling like they are empowered to do something,” she said. “That’s how we look at history—what did average people do that was successful to achieve their goals? The coolest thing is trying to prepare students for life but using academic content to do that. But I guess that’s why I’m a social studies teacher—I see life lessons in everything we talk about.”