Be interesting...

“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.

Make class fun

“What we learn with pleasure, we can never forget.”
Louis Mercier

As you have probably already determined, I have a fairly optimistic way of looking at the world.  I believe in making life enjoyable and that all but the most somber situations can be made so.
You already know that I taught math, which can be deadly dry and dull.  I didn’t grow up with the deep desire to be a math teacher.  I actually ended up there by default, because my parents wouldn’t pay for college for what I really wanted to be – an actress or a pilot!

So here I was at twenty-two years old with a degree in secondary mathematics and a new husband who was just beginning college after a stint in the military. I was the primary breadwinner, so it was up to me to bring home the paycheck.  Math might not have been my passion but it was up to me to make it work. Instinctively, I knew that I had to make class enjoyable not only for my students but also for me.  After all, it was my own life I was creating and if I didn’t choose to make it worth living, who was going to? 

I sought ways of making class fun.  I collected rebuses which I used as bonuses.  I found a math game called Krypto (now available on Amazon and other sites) which I modified to use for the entire class.  (The kids liked it so much that they became ‘Kryptomaniacs’ and wanted to play constantly.)  I even turned factoring – a process in Algebra – into a bingo game.  Students did more math problems in one game than they ever would have done as homework.  Because it was fun, they eagerly did the work and improved in the skill dramatically.

I used humor wherever possible, anything to make the kids enjoy being in the class.  I told them early in the year, “You might not like math, but I want you enjoy the class.  We’re on the same journey for the next 180 days, so we might as well enjoy the ride.”  I know this worked, because to this day, I still hear from former students who tell me how much they learned in my class and how much they enjoyed it (Thanks, social media!)  I got to enjoy it, too, which makes sense for a job that’s undeniably very challenging. 

 

Why shouldn’t school be fun?

We all tend to seek out the people and activities that are the most fun. In fact, in our society we celebrate people who entertain us (not the kindest or most intelligent) paying them the highest salaries, giving them the most attention. Most of the people teens see as icons are actors, singers, musicians, and athletes - all who bring fun and enjoyment to their lives.

Everywhere we turn we are being courted to be entertained by the latest media gadget –IPad, IPhone, Play Station, Wii, TiVo, HDTV, ….and the list goes on. We, as teachers, have all that, and more, to compete with. If we want to connect with kids, if we want to hold their attention for longer than a couple of minutes, if we want kids to enjoy coming to school and to retain what we’re teaching them, then we must find a way to make school fun. Why? Because research shows that we learn more when we’re happy.

In Jean Chatzky’s The Difference, she notes that happiness is one of the key factors in whether people are successful. Why? There are many reasons, including the simple fact it’s easier to achieve our goals if we’re in a good mood. (She also notes that happy people are more likely to graduate and land jobs. They’re more productive, creative, dependable, and produce higher quality work. And they make more money.)

Recently, a survey was released listing companies that employees most liked working for. Who ranked number one? Google… because of the casual atmosphere, the fun environment and the focus on creativity. Who else is consistently in the top ten? Southwest Airlines, who have realized that the best way to hold customers and to make flying less stressful is to make flying fun. What other airline starts off a flight referring to the oxygen masks as margarine cups? Or says that anyone who wants to smoke can step outside? Who else but the Southwest crew has a contest where they award flying vouchers to whoever has the ugliest license picture or the biggest hole in their sock?




 

Conquer short attention spans...part 2

“A good teacher, like a good entertainer, first must hold his audience’s attention.   
Then he can teach his lesson.”
Hendrik John Clark

 

I was so curious about what I was learning as an actor with an audience of children that I began to consider going back to the high school classroom. As an entrepreneur at heart, I was also taking some high-powered business seminars from some very well-known and respected speakers. They changed what was happening in their seminars fairly frequently as well, working to keep the attention of the thousands of business people who paid a great deal of money to attend. I remember thinking that these speakers knew some secrets about how to present effectively, strategies I hadn’t learned as a teacher. They had to be good at holding the audience’s attention because if they weren’t, they were out of business.

I was fortunate enough to be able to return to the classroom where I had the opportunity to test out these new theories. Limiting the activity – whether it was lecturing, a game, some written work – to twenty minute intervals was an effective strategy for keeping the attention and interest of teens that are exposed to a multitude of distracting influences.

How do we know when we’re nearing the time to change what we’re doing? All we have to do is glance at them, check if they’re beginning to glaze over. If they are, it’s time to switch the teaching mode or maybe even dig into our bag of tricks for another way to reach them. Even just a short shift in what’s happening can make a huge difference.

Conquer short attention spans...

“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.”    Carl Jung

I have a short attention span.  I admit it.  In fact, it's even worse than it used to be.  I work from home now and have the TV running when I'm not writing or concentrating.  I've got the computer on with instant results for anything I choose to search for.  I've got my smart phone, my laptop, my DVR, my iPad, my 3D TV (Thanks, Oprah for sharing your favorite things!) and so many other pieces of technology that give me instant media gratification.  I love my media but it's done a number on my attention span.

Have you noticed how television doesn’t allow us to focus for very long on one thing?  TV shows are chopped up to allow long commercial breaks.  Commercials are shorter punched up with crazy camera angles.  They come at us with varied music at a fast and furious pace, sometimes as many as ten of them in a four minute commercial break. 

The internet is just as bad. We Google for information and are presented with a myriad of choices.  We click on one link finding we have to click on many more if we even hope to find the information we’re looking for.  Click…click…a side click to follow one of the ads they’ve placed there…click…click…what happened in the news?...click…click…click…what am I looking for?  Overwhelming, this information age!  Our brains feel fried and wired.  But, we get used to this pace, which does not bode well for our ability to pay attention to the areas we need the rest of our day. 

But here we are in the classroom with long lessons and few breaks.  Our students who have attention spans as short as mine or worse are expected to focus and pay attention as we drone on about a lesson they don’t even care about. 

I’m speaking about myself here as a teacher who used to talk for a whole 45 minute class period.  That is, until I bored myself so much that I actually quit!  Looking back now, quitting was the best thing that could have happened to me, personally and professionally and it was probably good for my students too.  I was too bored with teaching geometry to be the kind of teacher they needed and deserved.

Leaving the profession gave me the opportunity to work for a children’s theatre company.  I had never worked with little children before but I got to realize that, due to their short attention spans, we had to have a lot of variety in the shows we performed.  There was no formula, per se, as to how quickly we had to change on stage from talking to singing to a pratfall, but as an actor on stage, I could feel when we were beginning to lose the attention of our young audience.  I began to wonder if maybe our teens were not all that different, and if, in actuality, we should be changing our way of teaching every few minutes. 

Rest of this tomorrow….

The importance of greeting students at the door

“School teachers are not fully appreciated by parents until it rains all day Saturday.” 
E.C. McKenzie

Our kids often feel lost in a very complex world.  They struggle to be noticed any way they can, often opting for negative attention rather than being ignored by the people in their lives.  If we can connect with them as they enter our classrooms, we give them a chance to be noticed, which is a great way to begin any class.

Before I taught my Strategies for Success course, I taught a subject that most kids didn’t like – math. I decided early on that even though many students didn’t like math, I’d have a better chance to reach them if I could get them to like the class since we tend to soak in more information when we’re in a positive mood. I basically enjoy working with teenagers, which is why I entered the profession in the first place, so it was a natural inclination to greet them at the door each day.

In the early days I was too inexperienced to know how important that small amount of recognition actually was but I did notice that the kids beamed when I smiled at them or made a comment that was for them alone.  I would say simple things like, “I like those earrings” or, to a kid wearing a sports shirt, “Did you see the baseball game last night?”  Sometimes it was just a simple, “Good morning!”  The questions and comments got easier as the year progressed and as I got to know my students better.  It seemed to work because they often told me that even though they weren’t too crazy about math, they liked my class.

This plan backfired occasionally.  The most memorable example of that was the student who was in my Algebra II class one year.  He hadn’t liked math previously but he really enjoyed the environment I created in my class.  He liked it so much that he signed up for Advanced Math the following year which was not the ideal subject for someone who didn’t like math, wasn’t planning a career where this level of math was necessary and didn’t need it to get into college.  He struggled that entire year but, to his credit, he never gave up.  He even sat during the final exam with a pad on his desk that said, “I love math” and “I will not give up!”

I’ve continued to use this strategy in my professional development seminars around the country and when playing the role of the teacher in a play I helped write with playwright David Payton of Kaleidoscope Theatre called “High School BULLY”.  I stand at the door of the auditorium and greet the participants.  It’s much easier to connect with those in my audience if I’ve already made the first contact at the door.  Now I’m not a stranger onstage but an adult who chose to meet them.  None of this takes much time but the rewards are definitely worth it for all involved.

 

Are our classes interesting?

“Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us.  Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.”
Andy Rooney

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 for Success 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 blog will help guide the way.

A challenging job!

Teaching is without a doubt one of the toughest jobs on the planet.  Not physicially as there are certainly jobs that require much more strength.  It's the work load, the responsibility, the heart-breaking burden of carrying the lives of so many children for a whole school year.

Teaching is much more than standing in front of a bunch of kids talking as many people who aren't in the field of education think.  It's teaching our material which we must be proficient in of course.  It's helping them grow as human beings, knowing their learning styles and learning challenges.  It's keeping them safe both physically and emotionally.  It's keeping up with all the changes in education and technologly.  It's trying to find new ways to reach them while keeping up with test score madness. 

For most people the work day starts and stops at a certain time. For teachers, the work day begins in late August/early September and ends in May/June.  Because we've got those kids on our minds the whole way through.  We can't walk away from the job mentally until that last grade book whether physical or online is handed in.  And then we can have the time off that others experience on the weekends year round.

Of course, many jobs have gotten trickier these days with the constant intrusion of technology. But the classroom teacher is always thinking, always prepping or correcting or logging in data until that last day comes.

Let's give our teachers the respect they deserve for the valuable job they provide for our kids, our communities, our county. It's a tough job that most people would not be able to do well.