this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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If schools only focused on what students were motivated to learn, I'm not sure schools would really be accomplishing much. Not to say that schools shouldn't foster motivation in students. Just that technology, especially social media, is very effective at distracting people.
You can increase motivation to learn by making lessons more engaging even if it's a subject they're not personally interested in. But making lessons more interesting and engaging is not easy and we can't expect all teachers to have the skills and resources to do the research and development needed to produce lesson plans that are really interesting. I think it could be improved by putting more money into developing interesting lesson plans centrally and distributing the materials to teachers to follow instead of just producing dry curriculums. Teachers need support.
I have literally built a dungeons and dragons campaign to learn statistics, and had some students on their phones. I'm not a dancing bear, and having a dopamine panic-button makes it near impossible to engage with anything challenging (I struggle with it too and know it's an anxiety crutch, but it's super maladaptive).
I fully support kicking kids off their phones in class, I don't think any lesson no matter how engaging can compete with that. I'm not supposed to be on my phone during meetings, I think it's perfectly reasonable to ban phones from class. I was just commenting that work can be done to make lessons more engaging when phones aren't involved. There's of course a limit to what you can do, and some subjects are just inherently harder to get kids into, like statistics. But seriously good on you for doing that. I'm sure that while it didn't have perfect engagement, it was far better than just teaching it to the book.
Just curious, is there a place you can share that lesson plan to other teachers? It'd be a shame for all that work you did to not get to be used in other classrooms as well.
But also, screen addiction is very real
Agreed. I'm not defending phones in class, just pointing out that there's more work that can be done with lesson plans as well.
That aren't motivated and are bored as hell; the average motivation level for schools where I live is a 2.9... out of 10. If kids aren't motivated and they have devices on them, what do you think they would do in class?
That's just how school has always been. Students don't care because they take education for granted. It was the same 30 years ago, it is the same now. You're not supposed to have fun. You're supposed to learn so you can get a job that you enjoy.
Banning phones in class is the bare minimum. It was not that long ago that they smacked your hands with sticks when you didn't listen.
Hi, elder leftist here. The whole education system is already set up to produce obedient workers. If you don't believe me, ask yourself how much time is spent teaching kids to organise effectively, or advocate for issues they care about. Or even just build good communication with their classmates, like how to react to bullying.
All that matters is to follow the authority, don't question the rules, put the things in your head that they give you and nothing else.
The reason kids are bored in school is because the current system doesn't address the real problems they have, so why should they care about the system.
Their "real" problems are at most only real in that moment, and rarely end up mattering later, but even so, the responsibility falls on the students and their parents, not the school. School is here for you to learn the basics so that you can function as an adult. Your field of interest and its focus comes after that. More often than not, whether the student can pursue their interests depends on if the core education was sufficient or not.
But also, learning how to organize, identifying and addressing bullying, communication and encouraging study of personal interest were top priorities in all schools I went to from elementary throughout highschool, but then again, I grew up in Sweden and cannot speak for other countries. Nevertheless, students (me included) always complained about school.
What about during breaks? They're doing that as well.
Just pay attention in class, bro
Because during breaks is the time to either get some energy out or go socialize. A TON of social cues are learned during these breaks. And if they're getting their dopamine fix from their phones during the breaks, you think that they will be MORE inclined to pay attention in class? The answer is no.
Like the other guy said, pay attention in school. More is learned in school than just the course work.
Take it from an old man, as you grow up friends drift apart. People change, you meet new people. You'll always cherish those friendships you had back then, but you will never all be together in one place like you are now. People will have jobs, families, girlfriends, spouses, commitments. I love my best friend to death, we've been friends since jr high, but I see him once a year now.
Take advantage of the time you have with them. Go to the gas station and get a soda that's too big, walk around town aimlessly, do boring kid stuff. You'll have all the time in the world to be online here later, late nights writing comments at 10pm, thinking fondly about doing stupid teenager stuff with your friends 20 years ago
Yup, I haven't seen one of my friends in person in years because he's in the army. Another one lives right here in town but has a whole family to take care of, but every single time he's asked me to do anything with him has been a bad time, and I kinda feel bad about it. The rest of my friends have mostly either moved elsewhere or I've just not kept in touch.
So yeah, even people that I kept in touch with for some time after I got out of school have basically not been in my life for some time now. I've got a few friends that I usually hang with online, but all my school mates have basically gone their separate ways.
I won't say whether it's better or worse to ban phones during break, but I do think it is worthwhile to point out something that you might not know, given that you're still in school.
School is most likely the last time in your life to have actual, true friends. In college, and especially in work, your friends will almost certainly be fair weather friends, friends made out of convenience rather than anything substantial.
I get that school sucks. I still think so. But there's some benefits to how schools are run that you won't recognize until you're already out of school. Your social life will absolutely get tougher and you'll be more isolated. So, my advice is to take the bad with the good. Have some fun with your friends in-person, because that's really never going to happen again. Please don't waste your school life on your phone.
Nice reply. You made me reconsider that part about phones during breaks.
It is too late for me, but I believe it is for the better. If I made friends with the kind of classmates I always had, I believe they would have bad influence on me. For example, last year the class' main character, 17 at the time, found someone's shoes in locker room, unattended. He decided to piss into them. Also popular is weed, vaping, alcohol, making mess in places like McDonald's (like mixing a burger with cola and spilling it all over the table...), damaging school property on purpose, etc..
While not friends, I do have good memories about some teachers that will last. My elementary school teacher was quite nice. She would always listen if I wanted to talk about something, even if it was relatively nonsense. If I found something interesting, I was always hyped to tell her. Basically like a mom should be.
In middle school, my physics, chemistry and math teachers were nice.
You could always have some conversation with physics teacher, whether school related or not. He always kept happy mood, at least on the outside.
The math teacher did similarly, but I also appreciate how hard he tried to get us to learn at least something. He got to the point where he shown us the exact questions that were to be on exam. It didn't help. Now I feel quite sad about him, you could sometimes see him on the verge of crying. Especially during and after the COVID-19 lockdown. He tried hard to make math more interesting.
Chemistry teacher was also nice. I could talk with him about problems I had at home. Being able to tell about your problems to someone is nice. Also, when the COVID-19 lockdown came, we had online learning. I didn't have internet access, and only got an old laptop with broken keyboard from neighbor and I didn't have money for a replacement keyboard. It really surprised me, but he gave me money to fix that laptop. I don't know if he also intended that, but it made me feel like I had to put more effort into studying. I won't forget that.
Most of my high school teachers are nice though. Actually there's just 1 I don't like. That is a nice change since till high school it was just the 4 aforementioned that I liked.
They would probably be more likely to stare at their phones instead of learning if they did.
I do think that having students sit at desks for hours at a time is not an effective way of teaching. Giving students different ways of learning is beneficial and more likely to motivate them. But that usually is more work and more expensive to do.
In an ideal world, every student would have an individualized, self paced learning program with a dedicated teacher. Unfortunately, that's not the case for nearly any student.
I would be interested to see how a self paced learning program with a dedicated teacher would end up if it was focused on embracing getting sidetracked. I know I've sat through history classes in the past and had semi-unrelated questions I wanted to research or ask about but didn't want to waste people's time. In situations like that I would prefer to have a computer to get a quick answer versus pondering it in the back of my head.
There must be some truth to an idea that you don't learn as much from an answer from a question you didn't ask.
I had a history teacher in school that liked me even though I barely paid attention in class. I was bored in the class itself, but loved history and would spend the entire period just reading the textbook because I found it interesting. So even though I didn't pay attention I would still ace assignments like nobody else in there.
I was usually a couple chapters past the class at any given time.
Man, I remember a couple teachers that encouraged randomly asking questions like that, and the whole class was really engaged. It was very rare but an amazing environment to learn in. I feel bad that there's so many people that never got to have those sort of teachers.
It's like the educational equivalent of a gateway drug. Some of the electives I took like programming really encouraged it and that's what kept me interested even afterwards with subpar instructors.
I think at a certain point, you should be able to drop math as a subject and take programming instead. There's no shortage of math concepts in programming that still require understanding of underlying concepts, but I can easily say if I had that option in school, I'd have learned way more in a programming class than I ever did in math.
I mean programming is a way to get someone engaged and to some degree there can be creativity. It would almost be like a more topical and realistic version of a word problem