My children and I had set out in our waterproof everythings for a day of avoiding the house. I had tucked my phone away and purposefully brought a camera - I really wanted to spend a day in the great outdoors with my children without constantly feeling the need to share it with the rest of the world in real time.

We’d crossed a few fields, walked through a farmyard, got up close and personal with a herd of cows, and that’s when it happened.

“What’s the password, Daddy?”

My daughter was guarding a gate, demanding the password she had thought up before she would let us pass through. I wasn’t sure what it might be, so I asked.

The reply: “Daddy’s stupid phone.”

It hit me hard. On a day when they hadn’t seen me using my phone, it was still on their minds. And, in their view, the device was clearly something negative.

This was the moment I finally recognised that I had a problem with my smartphone. I had long suspected that there was an issue, but I had not let myself believe it.

I was an addict. And over time I came to understand that my role as a teacher was a huge part of the problem.

So I decided to conduct a little action research: what if I dumped my smartphone for a whole month? How embedded has technology now become in a teacher’s life? How easy it is to survive without a phone when you are a teacher?

Hold the phone

I had already tried numerous things to wean myself off my smartphone: turning notifications off (I think I probably checked all the more); deleting apps (I’d just spend more time signing into social media accounts in a browser); setting my phone to turn off at 9pm and come back on at 7am (it didn’t stop me using it between those times); leaving it in another room (I could just go and get it); setting rules about not using it when around other people (this just meant I was finding excuses to leave the room).

It was clear I was not in control; the smartphone controlled me. And it wasn’t browsing Facebook to keep up with friends and relatives or mindlessly surfing the internet that took up the bulk of my smartphone time. It was my job.

School email; staff chat groups; entering data and tracking it; sharing children’s work on parent platforms; accessing all manner of CPD opportunities; giving feedback on homework the instant a child has completed it - all this can now be done on your phone. And these are just a few of the many examples of how embedded technology has become in teaching.

It sounds great at first: quicker, more efficient ways of working, more connectivity, more communities of support. But the truth is that none of this made me happy.

On social media, I’d be looking for validation (and ultimately being constantly disappointed) while feeling inadequate as a teacher and a school leader as I read about all the wonderful things that others were doing and that I was failing to do.

And on workload? If your emails are always on, do you ever switch off? Do you ever get that time to spend doing the things you love, if an email can break into that time and steal you away? Does the fact that you can more easily provide feedback and share work mean that you feel the need to do more of it, and faster? Does the WhatsApp group with your colleagues (whom you like very much) get in the way of your other relationships?

These are questions we must ask ourselves. While Andrew Przybylski, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, has explained that the research cannot yet tell us how damaging smartphones might be - or even if the device itself is an issue (see bit.ly/ScreenAddict) - I knew that, in my case, it was at least part of a problem I needed to fix urgently.

So I ditched my phone. Well, I ditched my smartphone. I felt it was my duty to my loved ones and colleagues that I was at least contactable, so I bought a £14 Alcatel “dumbphone”. It had no internet. It did not even have Snake. It was as analogue as you can be without ditching a phone altogether.

I decided I would still allow myself access to my laptop and a venerable iPad because I wanted to see whether my behaviour shifted to other technology, or if the smartphone really was the issue (I did not use either to any great extent in comparison with my phone).

And that was that. I began with the intention of running the experiment over a month. That month is now done. Here is how it went.

The first 24 hours

I’d not really talked much about wanting to try a phone ban, and starting was a fairly spur-of-the-moment decision when I came across the “dumbphone” in Asda on a late-night shopping trip.

So day one was, by chance, a busy Friday in school.

They say the first 24 hours of cold turkey are the worst, but I was surprised at how easy it was. I was expecting some kind of Trainspotting-esque comedown, one that would result in my smashing the “dumbphone” on the ground and feverishly taking up my old trusty smartphone with glee. After all, I was an addict. My phone used to be the first thing I looked at when I woke up and the last thing I checked before sleeping. And if a particularly interesting debate was occurring on Twitter, I ran the risk of being late to work or late to bed - neither desirable at all.

However, it wasn’t bad at all that first day. In all honesty, I probably felt a bit smug and quite enjoyed the freedom of not being able to check in with the world at 10-minute intervals.

There were times when I went to get my phone out to pass a few moments, times when I thought I’d just tweet out a quick question to the hive mind and times when I wanted to share an educational thought or two, but on what was a busy day - reading through many application letters in the main - I was thankful for the lack of distraction.

I was glad, though, that I had brought some form of communication replacement right from day one at school. The head was out and we needed to be in touch about things during the day. Being totally phone-free would not have made this impossible (we do have a school phone) but it would have made communication more difficult.

The first week

It did not get harder after that first day, as I expected it to - it just got a little weird.

For example, I continued to reach for my phone in moments of boredom. I would subconsciously pluck it from my pocket only to find my brick of plastic, and I was continually disappointed to realise that the only thing I could do with it was delete some messages (the memory is woefully small).

That these movements were so wired in was worrying, but it makes sense: as Kester Brewin noted in Tes earlier this year, the research around how we learn with and through our bodies is compelling. I had taught my body to seek out my phone and it was trying to repeat the movements constantly (bit.ly/BrewinBody).

I also began to notice how prevalent smartphone use is in schools: there were certainly times when I was the only one in a room not looking at a device, which, it turns out, is an incredibly odd and lonely feeling. I started to think I was I cutting myself off from a world that is now so reliant on the entertainment afforded by smartphones that I was denying myself the rich environment the internet can offer for work, that I was the one missing out on life.

Fortunately, I managed to shake these feelings off, and I realised that this was the cravings talking. And as I rode out each episode, I felt more able to resist the next one.

Indeed, I began to adapt. You may think I would have slipped into sending great missives via my phone’s text messaging system to fulfil my desire for a phone hit. But composing a text in the old-school way (one click for “a”, two for “b”, and so on) put paid to that idea. I found that when I did need to contact someone, I ended up ringing them.

So, ultimately, I was communicating less.

Was this a problem in the modern teaching profession? No, not really. Did it have a particularly positive impact at work in those first few days? I was possibly a bit more attentive in meetings and less likely to excuse myself from conversations in order to go and have a quiet moment with my phone.

But a moment of great epiphany remained, at this point, elusive.

The second week

It was half term. You may think this would make things easier, but half term had become a really high usage time for me in terms of education-related tasks. I would read social media more avidly, get little jobs done on my phone to “catch up” - I would pretend I was engaging with what was in front of me but really I was still in the work headspace.

I realised I had long been kidding myself that what I was doing wasn’t directly for work. I’ve shifted my view now: if it is to do with teaching and education, then it is work. If I weren’t a teacher, I wouldn’t be reading Department for Education documents or engaging in online discussions about how best to teach geography to primary pupils.

Admittedly, this is not just about phone-based work. Whether we are thinking about how to tweak tomorrow’s lesson based on assessment from today, or we are worrying about the child with a really difficult home life, there can be aspects of the job that are very hard to leave at the school gates as you walk out in the evening.

But the smartphone exacerbates the situation. We are now constantly on call. We always have a catalyst to think about work because we know that in our pocket lies a tool that will potentially help us complete any outstanding tasks, allay any fears or confirm something with a colleague.

So my half term was glorious. No paranoia. No struggle. It genuinely felt like a rest this time. For years, the holidays had not been anywhere near one.

The third week

Whether it was the half-term break that was an actual break for the first time, or the effects of not being plugged in taking two weeks to kick in, week three was transformative.

Returning to school post-holiday, I was absolutely raring to go. I was super productive and full of enthusiasm, launching myself into my leadership duties of planning and preparing for the coming year. I have to admit, this was not normal.

I found that I was beginning to remember things more, too - I was no longer relying on taking a quick snap or typing a note.

And not only was my memory improving but I also had time to think about things. Those random queries that can be satisfied with a quick Google were allowed time to rattle around my brain. I was able to think of possible answers and solutions myself and they were better answers and better solutions as a result.

I also noticed nature more. As I walked, I noticed my environment, and felt a warmth as I was more connected to it.

This all contributed to a change in me. When I was working with the children - even when doing woodwork, surely one of the most stressful things for a non-expert primary teacher to teach - I found I was much more patient, more calm and relaxed. I was perceptibly better able to enter into the moment and I enjoyed the time working with them. No longer was I trying to rush through content - I was taking the time to break things down and to explain things thoroughly. Not having a smartphone had truly changed my teaching.

But was my workload adding up without my doing all the small bits of work on my phone? The simple answer is no. It appeared that I had become more productive at school. I was now more focused on tasks and was doing things more effectively all in one go rather than splitting things over a number of dips in and out across an evening.

And my social media usage? I had kept up to date sporadically via my laptop. I did not feel the need to post frequently, nor the desire to. When I logged in, it was to do something meaningful. And so I dropped from 815 tweets in May to just 162 in June.

By the end of the third week, I did not really think about my former smartphone-enabled life at all. I had moved on.

The final week

I am writing this at the end of my fourth week, and I am shocked at how easy it has been. The huge comedown I expected never came. Rather than negatively impacting on my teaching, the ban has had a hugely positive impact.

So I am faced with some difficult questions.

Would I encourage more teachers to do it?

Yes, certainly, even if only as a trial. There are people to whom I have spoken who are fairly open to the idea, having noticed the negative impacts in their own usage.

Should schools encourage teachers to ditch their smartphones?

It is very much down to personal preference. Some people make connections online that are meaningful and helpful - indeed, staff in small schools or challenging contexts find a lifeline in having an online community to be inspired by and to chew the fat with.

And, in spite of my own actions, I do prefer to think that developing responsible use of technology is better than complete prohibition. As much as I may have maligned smartphones, they are certainly wonderful things that can expand horizons and bring new opportunities and possibilities, particularly in the world of education.

But we all have to assess our own position as to how well we are balancing the positives and negatives of having such a device.

Do all school cultures allow responsible smartphone use?

In some schools, there is a culture where teachers are expected always to respond to emails immediately, and always to be ready to chat about the next day’s staffing issues on WhatsApp. Going smartphone-free in such a context could be a brave and potentially perilous thing to do. I am lucky my school is not like that.

The answers here aren’t easy. Teaching still has a long way to go in terms of how it treats its workers. It is up to the system and school leaders to truly value the health of their staff and to make changes that no longer necessitate such an “always on” way of working.

Is this going to be a permanent change?

I’d really like to think so. I’ve managed well enough without a smartphone by making some adjustments, and there certainly have been positive effects on my own life and my professional work. I have a sneaking suspicion that we humans can’t work fast enough to keep up with technology so, personally, I’m glad I’ve got out of that race. I’m sure my brain - if not my family, friends, colleagues and pupils - will thank me for it.

Aidan Severs is a deputy headteacher at a primary school in the North of England. He tweets @thatboycanteach

This article originally appeared in the 19 July 2019 issue