Kids are telling us they are bored.
The other day a friend showed me the “bored in the house and in the house bored” Tik Tok video. It’s about how due to Covid-19 we are all stuck at home, bored and it has gone viral. The multiple versions were quite funny. But boredom is actually a real crisis we are facing in education today.
Did you know that in a recent high school survey from Yale, the most frequently used words to describe how high schoolers felt about school are the words “tired” and “bored”. In fact, boredom increases with every year students are in school. The problem is huge. Unfortunately, we, as a society, also have the tendency to believe that something is wrong with the kid if they say that they are bored vs. digging into “the why” behind the boredom. Kids are bored for many reasons. For instance, they may not feel like they have a voice or they cannot identify with the subject matter, they lack choice and they find the topic irrelevant to their lives. And right now with the use of one mode of online learning this problem could get worse.
So then how do we combat boredom?
One of the best ways to combat boredom is to create learning experiences that are engaging and help kids connect or identify with what they are learning. We need to help them create an intrinsic value to the learning by making the subject relevant. Kids need to feel something about what they are studying and how this learning matters to their lives. By creating this connection kids then see themselves as agents of learning. And it propels them to want to pursue the knowledge ongoing. We are helping to cultivate their intrinsic motivation.
Connecting to the material matters
Our driving question or “mission” is one of the ways to help kids ask themselves “why does learning this matter?” Sometimes it’s about applying what they have learned like doing a fundraising campaign to support an organization helping with hunger or creating a podcast to raise awareness about an important issue. Through all of our projects we hope it spurs some “aha” moments that help kids find meaning through making a difference and having fun along the way. It’s an opportunity to connect and cultivate a deeper value in the subject matter. We also hope it helps them better identify with what they have just read about in the Zine or learned about through our online lessons.
At Rock by Rock, we believe that we can combat this problem of boredom. Learning can and should be engaging and we want kids to know their interests and reflections matter. We want them to know that taking action to better our world is cool. And we want them to identify themselves as “changemakers” and believe they have the power to engage.
Practical Tip:
There are many ways to create relevant and engaging experiences. A few tips you can try to help cultivate intrinsic value in what kids learn include…
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Get excited together – “motivation contagion” is when someone sees you get excited about a topic and then gets motivated themselves. It’s like the motivation spreads. Learn about something together and model for kids why they should get excited about learning something.
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Focus on growth not performance. If a child only does a task to get good grades or a score, it doesn’t lead to lasting motivation. If we want to cultivate lifelong learners we need to show them the true value of learning.
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Take action and make something fun. Making something helps you actually apply your knowledge in creative ways and makes the learning stick. For example, instead of just reading about tomatoes, grow some tomatoes. Instead of just learning about the importance of movement, create space and time to engage in movement and stretching or take brain breaks throughout the day.
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Help kids identify themselves with the subject matter. When kids can see their own identity within the field of study or topic we know they are building their intrinsic motivation to then pursue that knowledge. Let’s help our kids see themselves as scientists, changemakers, leaders, not just someone who can do science, or make change.
If you are interested in learning more check out a few more articles on engagement and motivation.
Bored Out of Their Minds: Article in Harvard Ed Magazine
The science behind motivation – American Psychological Society.
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