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.