One year after Texas restricted cellphone use in schools, one North Texas district is finding success by looking backward. At Wylie ISD’s administration building on Tuesday, tables were covered with photos that looked as if they had come straight from the 1990s. The images showed classroom mome nts, school bus rides and student life captured with a distinctly analog feel. But the photos were not decades old. They were taken by members of Wylie ISD’s Class of 2026 using disposable cameras as part of a district project launched after the state’s cellphone restrictions took effect. “It was definitely weird, because none of us knew how the photos were going to turn out. Like, we would take pictures, and someone would say, ‘Can I see it?’ And I’m like, no, you can’t see. I’m sorry,” said Wylie East High School graduate Brooke Bickley. Like many of their classmates, Bickley and Wylie High School graduate Will Doty initially had little experience using disposable cameras. “What do we do with this? They would hold it up,” Superintendent Dr. Kim Spicer recalled. Spicer said district leaders saw disposable cameras as a creative way for students to capture memories without relying on cellphones in the classroom. Last fall, Wylie ISD launched the Student Camera Project. Forty seniors who served on the Superintendent’s Advisory Council each received a disposable camera with roughly two dozen exposures and were asked to document moments that mattered most to them. “One of the favorite things I documented was my AP lit teacher won teacher of the year, so getting to take a picture with the entire class was pretty cool,” Bickley said. Doty focused much of his camera roll on athletics. “I really liked it for basketball season. I tried to take one after every home win,” he said. For Spicer, the resulting photographs showed that despite changes in technology, the student experience remains remarkably familiar. “When you look at the pictures that the kids captured, school isn’t really that different from back in the 80s, and that’s how I took pictures in high school. And so kids are kids, school is school, and I think they had a really good time capturing their memories in a novel way,” she said. Spicer acknowledged she initially worried the cellphone restrictions would create challenges for administrators. She previously described the new law as a “recipe for disaster” because educators would be responsible for policing devices that many students view as an extension of themselves. However, she told the district’s board of trustees this week that Wylie ISD recorded about 4,400 cellphone-related infractions during the law’s first year, less than one violation per student. “They did very well. I was very proud of them,” Spicer said. Students and staff also reported benefits beyond compliance. “I noticed a lot more productivity from people in the class,” Doty said. Bickley said the changes improved her social interactions during her senior year. “It definitely helped me in the social aspect, because I would just go to class, do my work, and sit on my phone the rest of class. But I met a lot of new people and met a lot of new friends my senior year, which was fun,” she said. Without scrolling or swiping, students found another way to document their lives, slow down, and focus on the moments that mattered most. ...read more read less