The Kids Are Right: School Is Boring – Education Week
Bored Out of Their Minds | Harvard Graduate School of Education
I spent 8 semester supervising student teachers. I observed over 140 lessons be taught in most grades levels and content areas. I consistently surprised by the level of disengagement I observed of students in the classrooms. They looked bored and disengaged. In one AP Chem course, I witnessed for two different days, 6 boys walk into the classroom and sat in back row, look at the chalkboard for the learning targets the teacher had written, reached into the backpacks and pulled out their phones. They had spent three minutes determining that they already knew what was to be taught, so they started playing online games. After the second day I asked the teacher if he had seen what I had. He responded that those boys did know the content. But he needed to make the whole class knew it as well. I offered some suggestions which he embraced and those boys had more engaging work to do instead of gaming. I began looking more deeply at the research and literature surrounding that phenomenon. I remember back to my own learning and realized I too was bored at times.