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….