At this day and age, it is very hard to get anyone to listen, especially the younger generation. Every time I give instructions in class, I find myself repeating the message five times at least, and sure to have somebody ask that same question several more times, and at the end someone will claim that I never said so…
As a substitute teacher, I have a habit of putting the instructions on the board. At the end of the day, I leave them there in case someone claims I didn’t (my son once told me that when they had a substitute, students would tell her they already did this assignment, and then would tell the teacher the sub never told them to do it).
The phenomena of not listening, however, is not limited to the presence of a substitute teacher. I often, while visiting classrooms, or escorting students to events or a lecture, witness from the side the lack of attention; students are just tuning out.
A recent assignment took me, as an aide, to a higher level algebra class. With the excitement of listening in a high-level class (yes, I do love math) came the realization of how frustrating it is. I watched a good math teacher explaining factoring to a crowded class, and from the back I could see how five students are following and responding, while thirty others are blankly copying, talking to their friends, or trying to hide their on-going cell phone conversations…
Allowing electronic devices in class is one of the biggest mistakes in education; It is an epidemic in every school I visit. I used to fight it fiercely, but lately, as I notice schools relaxing their policies, I do too, allowing the irreversible harm. The good intentioned educators who lobbied for tablets for all students, especially in low income schools, had created movie watching and game playing a standard…
I don’t know if the presence of electronic devices are the only cause of this lack of attention and inability to listen. Is it a problem of attention span caused by this digital era? Is it part of a general eroding in discipline, outcome of deficiency in consequences, or is it a result of a failure to teach and demand attention?
Our students are just tuning off and ignoring instructions! Isn’t it something we should not ignore? Something we should not tune off our attention to?
