“You must never tell a thing. You must illustrate it. We learn through the eye and not the noggin.”
Will
Rogers
I don’t
know about you but I’ve sat through enough boring after school meetings. I know they’re required. I know that we’re supposed to know the
content they’re sharing. But couldn’t our administrators (who most likely were
teachers first) find an interesting way to communicate with us?
One day in
my Strategies class, I polled my students to find out what their
greatest challenges were so that we could brainstorm solutions. To my surprise, the overwhelming response was
boredom – not too much homework, bullying, difficult school work –
boredom. I was shocked!Boredom is a problem not only for students but for many adults as well with our affinity for the instant gratification. We’re used to constant and instant access to text messages, internet, conversation with friends, and television and that’s made our attention span shrink. The result is that we need constant stimulation or we think we’re bored.
This is
more than just addressing a short attention span. We must make our teaching interesting to our
students or we lose them. And lost
students have a way of being found, usually by acting out. We must do our best to vary our lessons, add
fun, make them relevant and make them worth listening to or else there won’t be
a class there to teach, just a bunch of bored, uninterested kids.
How to make
the class interesting? Only the
individual teacher can determine what the answer to that question is for them,
but hopefully, the tips in this book will help guide the way.