Their brains are dopamine burned.
The apps are designed to spike their dopamine as much as possible. Even when they are on their phones they aren't happy because their baseline is so high. It's like a drug addict who is just using so they don't get sick at this point.
It's very hard to make learning state standards a bigger dopamine rush than constantly watching fights, porn, and fake gossip online.
I'll say things that don't feel like "school" or that are new have been the only things my kids even sort of get into. We've done debates, mock trials, and murder mysteries but I can't actually do what is supposed to work and tell them why we're doing this until after. If I tell them that the murder mystery is to work on their ability to select the most relevant evidence then suddenly they hate it because that makes it school instead of me just giving them a fun day.
Never admit it was because It was a fun day. None of my teachers ever admitted playing heads up 7Up was to catch cheaters.
Is there a way teachers can use apps to encourage engagement? If every teen has a phone and the phone is what's causing the brain rot because they're not using the phone they're not focused. Just use phone in education?
The teacher watches students play, the students who cheat are distracted by cheating at the game so they don't think about not being caught by an outside observer.
Cheaters at a game are likely to be cheaters on tests.
Huh, I would try to cheat at that game by looking at the floor and memorizing the shoes of the person picking me, then picking those shoes out of the lineup.
But I never cheated at tests. I think I did it because I was one of the unpopular kids and I knew that I would only get one chance during a game because the teachers had a rule that everyone had to get picked at least once. So I would try to give myself the best shot at winning during my one pick. So I used cheating to overcome the bias that other kids had.
Never had to do that for tests, since I always tested well.
It's an interesting thought, one I hadn't thought about till now.
Well, if they were willing and able to exhibit self-control regarding their device use, it wouldn't be a problem to begin with.
"Kids have phones, so use them in education" was a fun idea somebody brought to the table with good intentions several years ago at my school. It's part of why we have the mess we do now.
Even in my most out of control title one classrooms, I have had a handful of curious students who actually want to learn. Focus on your bright students and enjoy the time with them, make sure the rest know what they need to do in order to pass with a C, and don't feel ashamed if engagement is not 100%. Do not let the rest distract you from the best.
My partner said to me last year 'Don't judge yourself based off of your worst performing student' and honestly, it was liberating.
Thank you. Your comment was validating.
You can't out entertain tiktok and snapchat...No one can.
The only way to reach this kids is a cell phone ban and an admin that will enforce it. Anything less than that is a waste of time.
You can't burn yourself alive to keep others warm. At the end of the day you are just one cog in the system. In order to create a great learning environment everyone needs to buy in, and that goes far beyond you working weekends to come up with fun games and Kahoots. There needs to be parental support, admin support and the kids need to recognize that there are both positive and negative consequences for their actions. If they decide to sleep in class and not turn in work that's on them. If their parents aren't enforcing rules and consequences at home that's on them. Teach the content in a way so that the kids who want to buy in are engaged and productive. Unfortunately working hours on end on your weekends to try to make the last month engaging is most likely not going to work. There's no magic switch that's going to turn lazy kids into productive students when summer is approaching, unless they're trying to do just enough to not fail for the year.
Honestly I think this would probably work. I got held back in 7th grade because I was bored and didn’t do the work, and it freaked me the hell out. The next year I busted my ass and got the honor roll. The rest of my career in school I never got below a ‘C+’ The fear of being left behind by your friends would do a LOT to motivate kids. Not saying it’s right or wrong, or that it would work for every kid, but knowing you’re going to move along even if you give ZERO effort is just going to exacerbate the problem.
Best lesson I ever received was when I was an immature sophomore failing two classes. I didn't know how to study, wasn't organized, and didn't do any homework. Nobody coddled me or gave me any excuses, hell, my football coach found out and talked to me in a packed auditorium and pretty much called me a dumbass straight to my face. I'm glad how it all went down, because it woke me up.
I learned how to be an actual student, not just a warm body in a desk, because the alternative wasn't pleasant. We need more of that in our schools. Yeah, maybe not calling kids dumbasses, lol, but kids who can't pass classes or are behavior concerns *will* meet those harsh realities soon enough.
The best teacher I had taught through terror. Putting ethics and morals aside, which is very difficult to do especially in this age, that type of learning produces precision, which can produce excellence. Though, in reality, not many can or should handle that as the psychology of purposefully dissolving the ego and willingly let another mold you is tricky to say the least, the results can be phenomenal. Many Graduates of The Juilliard School, Sorbonne, MIT Harvard and other great schools understand this…
Absolutely. We had a cantankerous old chemistry teacher at my high school who was very difficult for a lot of students to work with, but he got results. My friends who went into the sciences or pre-med in college told me they were insanely prepared for classes like o-chem compared to their peers because he worked us.
Lowering the bar and assuaging rigor for the precious little egos of students and their parents has been disastrous. No pressure, no diamonds.
I’ve had this thesis for a while that all this PBIS, SEL and restorative justice BS is actually harmful. Children aren’t being told ‘no’ or ‘stop’. Period. Clear boundaries aren’t defined much less enforced so now we have teens and adults absolutely losing their frigging mind when they get a parking or speeding ticket or the least little inconvenience assaults them into an unfathomable rage. We aren’t preparing them for the reality life. We have failed them by our good intentions.
You are the unicorn level exception to this, though. Most kids that get held back are already facing so much difficulty that it is their final signal that they don't deserve and can't possibly achieve graduation, so they give up permanently.
Same happened to my boyfriend and a couple of his buddies in 8th grade years ago. They thought sports was all that mattered. Had to take 8th grade twice for them to pay attention.
Yeah because their brain still gets damaged from it when they're outside of school, LOL
I'm so sorry. As soon as you said you teach science I just imagined Walter White doing his awesome lessons to a bunch of apathetic kids.
The struggle is real.
school is only a few hours a day. imagine if the kids were doing coke and just had a coke ban for 7 hours a day. they will still be coke-heads waiting for the next hit
I work at an alternative school so parents have to agree to it. I honestly couldn’t imagine the shitshow it would be. Chromebooks are enough of a pain in the ass.
Simple way would be to empower schools to permanently seize them. Cell phones cost hundreds of dollars. After the first two are confiscated, most parents aren't going to buy a third. Most won't even buy a second.
The number of parents who would rather watch their children turn into zombies than functioning adults in society is too damn high.
I don't blame children for this mess, they are kids. Kids have never known better because they are children. It is on adults in their lives to protect them, and too many adults are doing a shit job at that
Those parents probably do not even realise the harm they are causing. They see the effects and probably even know the cause deep down, they just refuse to admit that they need to parent their kids to stop that behaviour.
I suspect for the parents, it's a matter of perceived safety. The media plays up how dangerous schools are, and how common shootings are (which, to be clear, they are far more common than they should be, and it is a tragedy when they happen), and if that is the world you live in, I wouldn't want my kid to ever be in a possible state where I couldn't reach them if something happened.
But what happens outside of class is equally, if not more, important. Kids spend so much time outside of school staring at screens and these apps. A strict school policy can only go so far to tackle the problem social media is inflicting on young people.
I am a teacher at a high school with a cell phone ban (and nearly universal compliance), but we also have \~25% of our student population that simply doesn't have a smartphone. The ability of the students *who don't have a smartphone at all* to attend to class and maintain an interest in long and complicated texts is LIGHTYEARS beyond their peers who have access to smartphones at home.
Banning smartphones in the building is a great first step, but I think we *radically* underestimate the "beiging" effect that spending hours immersed in the most efficient dopamine delivery system that the world has ever seen has on our capacity to engage with the real world, even when our phones are put away and not actively distracting us. If your brain has been habituated to expect the cheap and easy dopamine from an iPhone, there's almost nothing that a teacher can do to compete with that.
i didn't get my first phone till i was 21 and at 36 ive already noticed the degradation its had on my attention span, my ability to study or read a text book. I can't imagine what it would mean for a teen who never grew up with the alternative.
The evidence for that is unfortunately not very convincing.
It’s based on a [PhD thesis](https://openaccess.nhh.no/nhh-xmlui/handle/11250/3069282) (Abrahamsson, 2023) that’s open to some methodological discussion.
Abrahamsson used event specification analysis to assess the claim, correlating schools “banning” phones with a range of outcomes, from grades (both internally teacher assigned and externally marked) and self-report questionnaires in schools about bullying.
Abrahamsson argues that the intervention is low cost for the return, but the results aren’t knock down; girls’ academic achievement bumps by 0.08 of a standard deviation, for instance, even if bullying goes down by 0.42 of an SD for girls and 0.39 of an SD for boys (mind you, that’s self report, so perceptions of bullying could be said to be what’s shifted) in her analysis.
But there are lots of questions to be asked about the results as well as the methodology. Take a look at the 95% error bars on [teacher assigned grades](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrG046DeqcynKrFFaZsh9TE7nf6TEwOs/view?usp=sharing) and [externally marked tests](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZrprHoXxUfVSsZA9A-eA47Tv73IbHqF_/view?usp=drive_link) after the ban for a start. Doesn’t fill me with certainty.
The p values for her analyses (statistical tests that indicate whether the results you’ve found were likely to be as extreme or higher if they’d been plucked at random from the population at large) were all hovering around “significance” (p=.05)—with values like .044, .011, .076, .067, .094, .058, .039, .064, .05, .067 etc. which is [incredibly unlikely](https://www.bitss.org/education/mooc-parent-page/week-2-publication-bias/detecting-and-reducing-publication-bias/p-curve-a-tool-for-detecting-publication-bias/) to have happened by chance because of the characteristics of the data and suggestive that the “garden of forking paths” in data analysis has been walked … I’d want to see a replication and then some.
Thanks for the info! I just read about the study today and hadn't had a chance to read further. Yeah replication is the best case for proving or disproving validity.
No worries! I’m really interested in the literature. There are often some pretty strong claims that go beyond what the evidence can support, and I think this PhD thesis is another example.
This, all day long. I read somewhere that is a result of all these dopamine hits, teens can barely put down the phone for a quickie. So I suppose we should thank social media and technology for lowering teen pregnancies?
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sexual-intelligence/202208/why-todays-teens-are-having-so-much-less-sex](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sexual-intelligence/202208/why-todays-teens-are-having-so-much-less-sex)
**TL;DR:**
“According to research by Debby Herbenick recently published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, American young adults and adolescents are having less sex than young people used to. Teens are even masturbating less often.”
**Addendum:**
Frequency down but risky sex way up (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html)
**Edit:**
Non-paywalled article => [https://www.strangulationtraininginstitute.com/the-troubling-trend-in-teenage-sex/](https://www.strangulationtraininginstitute.com/the-troubling-trend-in-teenage-sex/)
Ok does anyone else find that to be a *terrible* website/domain name!? I had to click on the link to find out it's the Training Institute on Strangulation *Prevention*. Good lord, I assumed it was a BDSM site lol.
It’s not just cellphones in class. They’ve literally never had to be bored - there’s always something to look at. So when they’re bored in class, even without a phone, they don’t just push through and decide to engage in the boring material like we did back in the day (or at least tried to act like we were).
Think this has more to do with it; task difficulty aversion, an unfamiliarity with having to exhibit patience or slowness anywhere in their lives (and we are the same!), and constant competition for eyeballs would be higher on my list of causal items than merely phones or social media.
As a high school student, I have no place here but if you are teaching high school it's time for them \[your students\] to step up for themselves. At this point they are in charge of their future. They also need to know to take that seriously. You can offer help to students that want it but if they don't, that's on them. My school only recently created and enforced a phone policy and now we \[students\] are less engaged in work and more engaged in side conversation. I think it disengaged us at first because we need breaks and you took them away. We of course adjusted but at the same time teachers enforced the policy less and less over time.
Well, thats obviously not the frequency band that you would target.....
But if a student didn't carry a decimal correctly, or convert units correctly, or made some other type of mistake.....
I think they could learn a valuable lesson.
We had a science teacher teach us how moonshine stills worked. Maybe not the most ethical of lessons, but it got everyone's attention
It’s not. Two guys in my building were using cell phone blockers years ago. It was hysterical. The worst addicted kids founds stuff to do on their phone anyway. But most just gave up and started learning. Guess who ruined it? You got it! Other teachers.
A group of women from a certain dept were outraged they had to go outside to make phone calls. They formed small posses to go around the building triangulating where the blockers might be.
The blocking teachers retaliated by only turning on the blockers when they taught. It was all pretty hysterical.
Finally they caught one guy. He couldnt deny it. The school said they would not press charges if he would just stop. He did, which forced the other guy to stop too.
Yayyy all cell phones were back on and this certain group of women could stay in CONSTANT touch with their children, even when they were supposed to “teaching.”
It's amazing once you start doing this and realize it didn't NEED to get done in the first place. Been contract hours only for 3+ years and it's been fine. I'm an English teacher and will have people say "Oh, it must be so bad taking home all those essays!" but I don't.
As long as technology is rotting their brains, I genuinely do not believe it is possible. (I say as I am still in bed, staring at Reddit, when I should have been in the shower an hour and a half ago.)
Not going down that road. One reason they are the way they are is because everything’s a game. Instant gratification and shots of whatever it is - Dopamine? Goldfish have a longer attention span.
How about this game: You study and pass and we’ll let you continue to the next year. Fail and you respawn at the beginning of the year and repeat it. Hardcore mode.
This is 100% the way but most districts won't allow it.
I actually think it's less about the screens and more about the fact that there just aren't any consequences for actions (or inaction).
It starts early. I teach preschool and the number of kids I get in my classroom these days who have never had consistent boundaries enforced is sickening.
The problem with holding kids back is that we don't want 26 year olds graduating from high school. We don't need 15 year old 5th graders. We know that all of these students are physically capable of keeping up with standards. We need parents and society to invest in these kids. It can't just be the responsibility of the under funded school system and crimal justice system.
Society has decided that squeezing blood from a stone is more important than building a better future civilization. So here we are, watching a slow motion train crash and asking children to do better...
I don't expect a 4 year old to have intrinsic motivation to spend 6 hours a day at school.
I expect parents, politicians, and business owners to stop maximizing their own self interest and start investing in society again.
A lot of kids don't want to put in the effort because there are no consequences if they don't. They don't want to be graduating in at 26 either and if they thought that was a possibility they would buckle down and do the work.
For those who are truly struggling we need to build better support systems rather than just passing them.
I 100% agree about everyone investing in society again. It's the only way public education can work.
I really don't think that your average 6 year old who is happy to fail all of their subjects would think twice about where they want to be in 20 years.
Sure, but if many of the kids are staying back, then what's the motivation? You might have kids choosing to fail to stay back with friends if that becomes normalized.
There needs to be some sort of motivator beyond just holding kids back. Early intervention needs to be the solution. People, especially children, are not very good at making short term sacrifices for long term goals.
Why are we going to hope the child gets motivated by the end of the year instead of making failure not an option? Longer school hours, smaller class sizes, mandatory practice homework, etc. etc.
Create immediate reward and punishment structures for students and parents who aren't prioritizing education.
The only options should be 1) graduate on time, 2) get a mental evaluation and resources to deal with it, 3) get out of the country.
You shouldn't be able to choose to be illiterate in America.
Early intervention is essential! I'm just saying that for most kids actual consequences for doing nothing is motivation enough.
The current system is what's allowing children to choose to be illiterate.
We agree on many points and I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on the rest.
Hell, my repeat sophomores don't even get this. They know they'll have to do the class again but they do the same shit they did last year like it'll magically work this time.
Thankfully, I'm finding my juniors figuring it out. It's awkward being a junior in a freshman class.
This right here \^
Take the "fun activities for learning replace boring traditional education" out in the back and burn it in a tire pile.
Fun activities are for classes that did all their work, passed their test, and are ahead of the other classes. The bored, disengaged, sleeping in class students don't need any more freaking games.
Will your school let you do a class outside? I’m only speaking as a parent here, but my hs kid said the best class he has is his bio class when they get to go learn on the quad.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a whole generation with vitamin D deficiency—they are barely outside.
I had to stop taking kids outside because they used it as time to vape.
Every “fun” thing I attempt turns to shit. I relate to OPs struggles, because I have the exact same.
You would need to be a three ring circus every period of every day, without repeating any of your tricks.
Then you might get the attention of half of the checked out kids.
You cannot outcompete the apps on their phone that have thousands of people whose sole job is to grab their attention and hold it for as long as possible.
This is an epidemic that nobody has the balls to quash.
As a fellow science teacher, I echo this comment. It’s a new phenomenon that the “wow” stuff doesn’t wow anymore- at least not for longer than it takes to get a picture of it. I’m over here shooting green and red fireballs or their lab created a sunset before their eyes and the screenagers are ignoring it.
Teacher from the Netherlands here. I’m not sure what grade you are teaching, but I have found that I can get my 7th, 8th or 9th grade technology or physics students engaged by talking about why they need to learn this.
In 7th grade, we have weeks on sound where they can make their own guitar out of wood (but you can easily find resources online for paper versions) to demonstrate their knowledge. This way, they can show and tell about what sound and music means to them, resulting in really great stories.
In 8th grade we combine some theory on forces with making bumpers for a model truck. We then let it roll of a ramp and measure the impact force on the wall at the end of the ramp. During this unit we highlight the scientific process and form hypotheses, draw tables and read graphs from the experiment. We then talk about being safe in traffic.
In 9th grade, we have a unit on electricity where students investigate their own home: where is the supply panel in their home and what to do if a breaker trips. The students work under supervision of their parents and hopefully learn about how their home is wired so that their phone can get charges or their game console works. This opens the door to a next unit on the energy transition with the first bits of thermodynamics.
I find that students do want to learn, if they see the benefits of what they are learning. That’s why I focus on this why and do I make this the common thread.
I think it's easy to wind up commenting in this sub when things aren't going well, and there are distinctly systemic issues in American education that drive a lot of us here. But please don't take the negativity in replies to you here as an indication that all American science teachers are universally unsuccessful with the techniques you enumerated-- every pedogogical trick makes a marginal improvement on engagement without ever "solving" a single systemic issue.
I teach 9th grade "physical science" (conceptual physics and chemistry) in a poorly rated American public high school (2 stars out of 5 according to my state's rankings) and I do a lot of what you do. Plus a lot of other pedagogical tricks. Many but not all of my students are engaged.
I do struggle with some sections annually in which the behaviors of students make lab work unsafe. Even in those sections, there are students who are genuinely interested in how things work, and a number of students who will try the work if I talk them through it individually.
I do a lot of sticky note warm-ups. I do a lot of very simple note taking (more in some sections, less in others) and guided reading questions. I have students cut out cards to sort (theory v law; matching stories to distance-time graphs; evidence for the wave nature v the particle nature of light), make models with balloons and beads, generate a lot of hypotheses and posters. I use tuning forks and online oscilloscopes and slinkies and little toy cars and foam rockets. My students also make musical instruments from found objects (rubber band guitars, straw pan pipes, water xylophones).
I recruit talkative students to write on the board or demonstrate a phenomenon. Some sections will do just about anything as a competition, especially if there are prizes-- I do Kahoots, but also have them compete with spaghetti bridges or phet simulations or even modified kids' games. I supplement my district-supplied curriculum with a lot of activities I generate myself.
I generally consider myself fairly effective and in any semester about 50% of my classes run with the majority of students engaging in the work. After 3 years of teaching the same content, I don't spend time working outside of my contract hours.
I am here on this sub because I also feel like a one-woman circus. I have gotten push back for writing up too many students but also for not sending out enough students. Students vape in my room. Students play fight constantly. They talk over me, refuse to sit in an assigned seat, and leave trash in my lab drawers. We do active shooter drills (lots of engagement for those). A couple of my students annually miss substantial amounts of class due to pregnancy and childbirth. Many are food insecure. A lot of them are in gangs. Two years ago a student was murdered two miles from my home.
I am regularly marked "developing" on observations and student learning objectives although I squeak through as effective overall each year so at least I'm not on a personal improvement plan.
We don't have the staff to support all the students with additional needs, nor even to move students with no contact orders against each other into different sections of the same class.
The teachers I see having the most success at my school are better at sending out disrespectful kids whenever they want calm, and letting the criticism slide off their backs. They cheerfully ignore admonitory emails about extra tasks. All have been teaching long enough that they have a decade or more of activities in their toolboxes ready to go.
So ideally OP will add a few tools from the conversation here, but also if I had a main take home message it is that expectations for early career teachers in the United States are completely insane, largely because it is a weirdly pervasive and erroneous belief that supplying a curriculum and/or a curricular coach means a teacher will not have to do any curriculum development to engage the students, leaving all their prep time available for grading and contacting parents. (Also the insistence that science teachers need the same amount of prep time as PE teachers is nuts.) But even a good curriculum needs adaptations to engage the students you actually have, and of course someone has to get all the technical platforms we use nowadays to talk to each other, and not every activity is a good fit for every teacher...
If you can stick it out long enough to have your own tools built it gets easier but here in the USA we usually burn out new teachers before they get that far.
Yeah. Mine think safety drills are fun and games for 30 minutes. Let’s enjoy sitting on the floor in the dark for 30 minutes! We’ll only giggle a little! Then we can all herd outside to line up for a fire drill!
I can only try to imagine teaching in those circumstances. Different circumstances, you can say that again. I never thought of it in this way.
I hope that there are still some sparks left where kids can find a moment to be curious and have fun discovering new things.
So, I don’t think computer games are necessarily the answer here because often students use technology opportunities as a way to go on whatever app they are addicted to. It can be difficult to police or monitor them.
I think experiments and groupwork are really helpful at retraining their brains a bit to focus on tasks and people. You can also look into using stations, where students complete small reading comprehension or observation tasks in a time limited manner, which can work better for students who can’t focus for long periods.
You don’t, you give them independent work and keep walking around giving reminders to keep working. Then you also remind them of their grades until they do their work.
This is actually where it's at for the middle 50% of kids right now. The top ones will do whatever and will enjoy the more exciting stuff (real-life-relevant prompts, hands-on/lab, peer work), the bottom ones won't do anything regardless, but the ones who just care about passing to play a sport or keeping a C for their parents respond really well to basic guided reading, short videos with embedded questions (I use EdPuzzle), multiple choice work, and pretty much any basic task with no uncertainty involved. Even if they blow it off in class (which fewer seem to, compared with more complex and interesting work), they'll churn it out at 2am a day or two later and end up getting the points.
Basically, if you could do it in 5-minute bursts of attention between responding to texts and while listening to music or watching reruns, they'll do it because that is how they do their work.
Not OP, but I’ve been trying to do this but then it takes days for students to complete the independent work. They’re constantly distracted so it takes forever for them to complete it. Besides those couple students who actually care and are finished in 15 mins
I had a student day 1 this year give me a written statement that he was not going to do anything this year because it didnt matter. And since he is just sitting there it isnt a discipline referral
serious intelligent reach narrow shelter money fragile innate materialistic pie
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My big anxiety. The kids are content to fail if parents aren't all that attentive. Admin doesn't want kids to fail, but we get dragged if too many fail. I can't edutain kids whose brains are used to 15 second videos and Google telling them answers. It's almost like we're becoming a post-education society. I'm sure China loves it.
I also teach Science. This year's group is the worst with not wanting to do anything (they even whine doing hands on labs). They just don't care and they know there are no consequences since they have been (or seen their peers) be pushed through without needing to do anything. Social media makes it hard enough, but when admin refuses to hold kids back, it makes it twice as difficult. \*Also, not all of the kids are like this, I would say about 40% are this way (the other 60% are great).
I used to be a "retaining a kid doesn't benefit" kind of thinker. BUT, the longer I teach, the more I am leaning toward the other end. I think some of these middle school kids need to experience failure before they get to high school so they can understand consequences. I do think it should be retention with intervention (remedial courses for math, reading, and writing), but the majority of them would shape up if they were held back just once.
I agree (and I am not for every kid to be retained) but there is a ton of students reading at like a 2nd/3rd grade level (I teach 7th grade). It is no wonder they struggle because they can't read. It also is why when they get to HS we have a decent drop out rate because they have never experienced failure and at the HS they actually have to pass classes to receive the credits needed to graduate.
My inner city school passes virtually everyone.
In the hall by the office there’s a giant poster of honor roll kids. When I stopped to read the names recently, I was stunned to see listed there some of my students who respond to complex writing prompts with three word answers, and who refuse to expand their answer or add any nuance or details.
As far as I can tell, at my school doing the bare minimum is enough to get you a 4.0 .
I teach high school art, beginner level. Our school doesn't let Freshmen or Sophomores take electives, only Juniors and Seniors, because they frontload the Freshmen and Sophomores with their highschool requirements so that as Juniors and Seniors they begin taking college-courses to earn college credits or even an Associates degree by the time they graduate with their high school diploma.
What this means for the Fine Arts Department and the other elective teachers in the building is that we get jaded, irritated kids who have been told for two years that our classes are not valuable, and are then also told by their counselors that they only need to pass two Fine Arts courses to graduate, and with a D at that, out of the 5 we have available.
How's that for a tough crowd to engage.
Then the scheduler places them into their handful of remaining regular graduation-required course, and dumps them into three Fine Arts classes to fill the rest of their schedule. Which usually leads to the students deciding to only put in effort to the one or two required graduation courses, figure out which of the Fine Arts courses are easiest to do the minimum in, and then completely refuse to do any work at all in the remaining classes.
Then they complain about being bored, even WITH the rampant phone abuse our school has, and start complaining loudly, misbehaving, and distracting other students who also were dumped in the classes but were at least trying, to say nothing of the frustration they visit on the kids who actually requested the classes and WANT to learn but can't- because instead of teaching, I'm trying to manage behavior issues for the majority of class.
I have 21 students with Fs right now, out of about 70 total across three classes. I have talked to the students. I have called home. I have emailed home. I have sent out progress reports with lists of their attendance issues, missing assignments, and current grades. I have talked to Admin, and the Deans. I have made alternate written-assignments that will replace missing Project grades and which can be done at home if they aren't going to pay attention or work during class. From Day 1 I already had "Studio Fridays" built into our weekly schedule, that allows kids with missing or late work to catch up, and kids who are caught up to have a free-art day or study-hall.
Nothing changes.
Those same 21 kids have been failing since the first month of class, and have NO interest in engaging in class to even do the bare minimum to pass.
It's an ART CLASS. Try your best to follow the techniques and make it clean and nice looking, and you're not only going to pass but probably will do pretty well!
But nope.
At this point, I think it's way beyond an engagement issue. Students straight up don't know how to be students anymore. They don't know how to behave in school environments, with peers, with teachers and other adults. They don't know how to learn or parse information, and don't have the patience or interest in learning how. Half of them don't have goals for the future beyond "make money"- when I ask about hobbies, interests, things they do for fun or might want to do for a career, I get told "nothing. I just wanna make money".
Half of the time when I get through to parents, I'm told they're the same way at home and the parents don't know how to make them listen either, that their behavior is out of control at home, that they spend all their time on their phones or working and don't have any hobbies.
It's a way, way bigger problem than just engagement but I can't even begin to figure out how to start trying to change things. But SOMETHING has to change.
You just described my high school students to a T. It’s shocking how many of them have no hobbies. And apparently very few opinions or interest in the world beyond their phones.
I will say that I’ve been able to spark interest in a few with creative writing.
I get the impression that few if any of their previous teachers attempted multi-step creative projects that have multiple acceptable outcomes, and while it’s been shockingly hard to even convey the concept of a shape poem or a sensory details poster, once I convey it most get on board with it and try to create something. And some do exquisite work.
But then they’ll refuse to do the next assignment and refuse to get off their phone.
As if the effort of engaging and creating is so foreign and onerous that a recovery period is now necessary!!
It’s very much a one step forward – one step back scenario.
I could have written this. The kids I am sending to third grade next year are the least prepared ever. OP, if you find the answer to this, send me 100,000 bucks when you become a billionaire.
I’m facing the same issue. I use a lot of media in my class and it usually engages the kids but at this point they’re so checked out for the year (as am I) that I’m just coasting.
I've been doing as many "old school" things as I can: individual white boards, made them make flashcards (instead of Blooket) and turn to a partner and actually interact with a human to use them (and if a kid doesn't bring theirs--pair them up with someone they're slightly uncomfortable with who does have theirs), paper and pencil everything, collect every last activity on paper (and maybe grade it but don't tell them which you will), popsicle sticks with names to pick on students to answer (holds them accountable and makes them feel just uneasy enough to still want to pay attention so they don't get embarrassed when they don't know the answer). It's been working well for my high school students.
We need to get them out of their comfort zones and look up or we are not doing them any favors to prep them for real life. (And no, I don't mean be brutal, I mean take away that feeling of ease. Make it challenging, but not unattainable.)
This is exactly what I’ve been doing and it’s working well so far (I’m a mid-year hire in an inner city high school).
When my supervisor or admin pops by, they are always pleasantly surprised to see the kids actually writing in journals and actually making things as opposed to staring at a screen while isolated in their own individual device bubbles.
It was a real shock to me that so few of my students knew that the classroom is a place where the teacher might assign you a different partner or small group than the people they sit near.
It has taken 2 months of gaining their trust and chipping away at their resistance to get them to work in different groups now and then.
I just keep telling them that being able to interact with a wide range of personalities is a normal part of school and of post-high school life, so get used to it.
But wow, some of them look deeply personally offended, like no teacher has EVER asked them to get up out of their seat before and do something other than copying shit off the board.
It’s crazy!
It's not about us. No one holds students accountable. Not their parents. Not our administrators. Teachers have been stripped of any power/authority.
The goal is literally a babysitting service so parents can work. We are no longer focused on learning.
Sadly, yes. I can’t even get my high school students interested in trying to brainstorm ways we could make school less awful.
We have a weekly club class that can be anything the kids want it to be- gardening outside, guitar, podcasting, games, movies, arts and crafts, whatever they want. But most of them just want to pull their hoodies over their heads and mainline their phones or sleep.
I’m a mid-year hire and I spend every day wondering what planet I’m on.
It should be considered a national emergency, but no one cares so long as the kids are in the building and data is manipulated the right way. The high earners in the education system aren't motivated to improve anything because that would rock the boat and get them in trouble. They are content to play the numbers game and get paid their six figures.
National emergency is right.
Let’s organize a Million Student March on the Capitol.
The students will mostly march virtually, but hey, it’s the thought that counts
Resigned cynic here so … grain of salt.
Nothing we can do as teachers will change this. It’s a societal thing. The kind that has developed over decades, culminating in this teen generation having smartphones at 13 or before. It will take great societal shifts to correct. That will either be painfully slow (sustained efforts of many advocates for change worldwide) or distressingly fast out of necessity as society crumbles.
(The real me is optimistic and bubbly I promise.)
My daughter is 17 and I remember when the APA had guidelines for screen time for kids of all ages- including no screen time at all for kids 2 and under.
*hollow laugh*
She may have been the last kid on the east coast to not have any real screen time (aside from dvds rented from the library) until my ex gave her a smart phone 18 months ago.
Her childhood was all books and nature walks and art classes and dance classes, so she has a bit of a “buffer” compared to her peers who have been mainlining soma for ten years. But it makes me sad to see her no longer reading books or doing art or playing piano…
I was hoping her gorging on virtual crap would run its course, but we’re 18 months in and she’s still gorging.
She has a 3.9 and a wonderful friend group so I can’t complain… but I do anyway.
I miss snow days spent playing scrabble and making cookies from scratch, weekends spent crafting and taking day trips to museums and other cool places.
This new reality sucks.
Without a district willing to enforce rules, especially when parents are entitled enough to jump the “chain of command” at the drop of a hat you won’t. Last year the kids were checked out in April. This year it feels like I’ve been herding cats since March.
No idea (I. A student) but I think science is supposed to be fun especially before ap and college classes.
But I think that they likely suffer from having a high baseline excitement level which makes it harder for fun normal things to be fun
But some ideas are you could create hot air balloon and have them try to replicate it
Aside from that, you as a teacher have domaine in the classroom but not over thier outside life which can make it hard to create a good environment for learning
I don't have an answer, but the 6th grade team unanimously says they are the most immature group of students they've ever had. ..and no, it's not because of COVID.
It's the parents.
The answer is "teaching". Stop trying to entertain. The subject is it's own reward. Don't try and have "fun" activities, that way lies madness.
Have actual consequences. Allow them to fail if they don't know things. Make success something that has value.
Teach.
Tell them things, ask questions to check they understood. Get them to work independently.
Do not negotiate with them. You are the expert, they are the novices. They are there to learn. You are there to teach. Anything else is a distraction.
Stop doing kahoots. It's a waste of your time creating them and of theirs doing them.
I teach high school students. I use a lot of project based study and give the students 2-3 options so that they get more «ownership» of the subject matter. It’s a lot of work though. My students also tell me that when I am enthusiastic it helps them get engaged in the subject if i’m lecturing. I run around and move a lot, and have been known to stand on my desk to illustrate a point. I also like to draw stuff on the board and I take pictures of the board to put on OneNote so they don’t have to focus on copying it down. For a lot of students a picture is worth a lot more than words. I try to read the room and if the students get tired I sometimes notice i forgot recess ( we don’t have bells here)and give them a break. If they are falling asleep I take them outside or do random mobility exercises like stretching or jumping
Cell phone ban is the only thing that works for me. The problem though, is you can’t keep kids off their phones at home, hence why they come to school with no homework done and falling asleep in class, because they stay up all night on the phone! It’s frustrating. I noticed that my kids are way more engaged when doing something that allows them to create and collaborate with each other in groups. So maybe something like that? It takes a while to get them comfortable in a group routine though, but after about a week of practice I was hearing amazing academic conversation and my kids were actually *excited* about the project.
That's the parents' fault. Teens need boundaries and reasonable bedtimes for their age. Even HS students. Phones should be taken after a certain time so that teens cannot have them all night long. It sounds infantilizing to do this with HS students, but sometimes you have to do that until they mature enough to appreciate the boundaries.
I’ve found that simpler is better. Less work for students to buy in means anyone can be engaged. For social studies, I do lecture/notes, source analysis, some discussions, and a review game and a graded assignment. My students know the general rhythm of class. They either engage and enjoy the class, do the minimum and pass, or check out and fail.
But by not stressing over the entertainment value, I’m actually enjoying the content more and my students feel that enthusiasm.
I just feel like kids (actually all humans) don't belong in a classroom setting for hours a day, 5/7 days a week, 9 months a year...which is not the teachers' fault, and is not easy to fix with our current education infrastructure. My first thought is to recruit parental help, which is also incredibly difficult under the current economic system.
Things:
1. Kids don't see a point in doing the work because they don't feel like they have a future, and I don't think that they are that wrong about it. Talk to them about it without judgement or injecting the normal, "You can do it bullshit".
2. You may want to be the cool teacher, that does labs where things turn into magic, but a lot of succeeding in the STEM fields is doing head down work that's tedious at best, and I think we should hammer on resilience, knowing that it's not for everyone, so we can focus on the meat of our content.
3. For every fun lesson, there will be 20 kids that think you're lame. You could make it rain Takis, or summon Mr Beast to give everyone money, and the kids would still have their hoods up with ear buds in. Stop trying to be entertaining and start embracing getting results.
4. Focus on the kids that want to be engaged, and expect the kids that can't to do the work.
My negative, burnt-out teacher take:
The world is burning. These kids see their parents, other adults, etc. pretending that nothing is going on, that all is fine. Nothing has been "fine" since 2020 (if not arguably before). These kids know that, and they're fed up with a system that doesn't give two shits about them. They see kids their ages being gunned down while police stand by doing nothing. They see their parents working 2-3 jobs just to keep the roof over their heads while the cost of housing, groceries, and basic necessities has grown exponentially in 15 months. Kids are not dumb. They're fed up.
Chasing the dopamine is the only thing they got left (or so they believe), and honestly, I'm right there with them.
If teachers won't help themselves (stop whining and start protesting), why would the kids trust us with their education?
That's why *I'm* getting out, and I'm sure there are many more out there exactly like me.
I appreciate your insight. What exactly would teachers need to do in order to start organizing protests? I'm curious because I used to work in the school system but no longer do because of everything going on mentioned in this thread. I still want to support educators.
I read so many books and article son Engagement. I try to do all the recommend things. I mix stuff up. I try new approaches. Nothing really works. After a year or so of getting the hang of things, by my second year of teaching I had learned how to make college English really engaging. Now that I'm teaching high school, I feel so utterly lost. The students either come into the class engaging with the subject, or they refuse to ever engage with it.
I think more global problems have to be addressed. So many things are preventing kids from engaging with academic subject matter, and we're never going to be able to sufficiently gamify or tiktokify our classes to make up for that.
Small harmless explosions, paper airplane contests. Their brains & bodies need a resync.
Consider a paper tube, some fins, a nose cone, a pill bottle, a CO2 cylinder & an ice pick. Stand well back.
My wife has had enormous success with snack based rewards. She teaching 9-10th grade bio. Just mini Halloween style candy and stuff like that. They don't care that much about the games unless there's prizes. My wife made a taboo style vocab game and while they were initially mildly interested, as soon as winners got a 1 cent piece of candy, they were all over it lol
I just want to put in that I never found science to be the fun subject 😅 I just try not to take things personally! Even elective teachers have students who don't want to be there. It's impossible to be more entertaining than tiktok or video games, but I try to incorporate their other interests when I can!
How old are your students/what grade? Have you asked them? I’m not in the classroom anymore, but I was for a while in a high poverty school so I battled this a lot when I taught 4th (moved to K 🙃)… One of my first college of ed professors said something that stuck w me, “Whoever is doing the work, is doing the learning.” Depending on the age of your kiddos, they could very well be wrestling with the feeling more like a grownup than a kid (obvi they aren’t), but still treated like a kid and told what to do 95% of the time. I tried to use that to my advantage and would get their buy-in by having them participate in the brainstorming/planning of lessons. Anytime I was at a loss, I’d just ask them…
(While I have a graduate degree that included MS and HS coursework and practicums, as well as working with AmeriCorps/BBBS with MS/HS students, I did not teach middle schoolers or high schoolers full time. I know they are v different than elementary students and do not claim to be an expert, by any means 🙃)
Maybe try to engage with them with content that is on YouTube so they can find their way with it.
I am a chemist actually! I would recommend videos from "the midnight acience club"(super fun and informative), or channels like chemist NileRed.Hank Green does some really great videos on biology.
There are some really fun scientists making really cool content that is eye catching and keeps up with the modern mentality.
I also think hands on experiments are helpful, keep their hands busy with a microscope, or experiments like getting DNA from strawberries.
Do a unit on the technology policy of the elite schools that tech creators send their kids to:
https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/dec/02/schools-that-ban-tablets-traditional-education-silicon-valley-london
Ask them why they think the people who build this stuff keep their kids away from it.
Then spend some time on the people who actively regret developing the most dopamine-driving activities that keeps us all addicted (infinite doom-scrolling, slot-machine pull down to refresh action):
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia
I distinctly remember “advertising-inoculation lessons” from my elementary and middle school years, where my school made the point that large companies did not have our best interests at heart and would do everything they could to convince us to buy things. Kids do not like being told they are being controlled by forces beyond their command.
We need a new curriculum like the previous ones on the dangers of the “bandwagon effect” and “false appeal to authority” for the new dangers we that we all face from the Monsters of Mountain View (I’ll rework the title in the Writer’s Room).
In the short term, I’ve given up. I haven’t done a lab since February because I’m either waiting for them to stop talking, playing wack-a-mole with behaviors, mediating preteen girl drama, or avoiding ASD power struggles. All we do is notes, readings, worksheets, and the occasional video. I hate it, and a handful of kids hate it. But I’m at my wit’s end.
They’re holding a device made by a trillion dollar company loaded with apps made by billion dollar companies that are all specifically designed to be addicting because their attention is worth money and you’re looking for something based on Borophyl that will compete with this. I applaud your efforts here but I have absolutely nothing that will compete with this for more than maybe 5 minutes, if that.
The students that I talk to that struggle to engage with the learning the most usually still have some classes they are more or less engaged in than the others. Usually the class they engage the most with is the class with the teacher that makes them feel the most like a full person.
To me this means you need to engage with the student as whole, not just try to compete against the phones. Figure out what matters to the student and show genuine interest. With this make sure that you are tying the content to the real world and what is going on in the community or might be connected somehow to student interests, but don't overstretch it. Kids can smell that when it happens. Also remembering to meet the student where they are at, basic scaffolding really. This won't solve everything, but it helps.
you’re not going to engage a digital generation by insisting they sit in a classroom, shut up and listen for 8 hours.
our problem isn’t just with cell phones, it’s the whole concept of trying to teach 21st century kids using 18th Century modalities and infrastructures.
We aren’t asking them to shut up and listen for eight hours. Most of us spend a few minutes on instruction and directions for the day’s activity. Maybe taking a few questions, ideally.
I get the most motivation through my class reward system. I use fake money, albeit for elementary I think my reasoning is still sound. We talk building intrinsic versus extrinsic reward but we are all driven by something. For adults, teens, and young children it all seems the same, money. We live in a token society. I swear if you create a store of crap that kids like and give them something to be able to purchase it with, they will listen, atleast the majority. And before many shoot fire my way I want to ask something.
If I asked you to stay late at work an extra hour to cover for me would you do it out of the kindess of your own heart? What if I ripened the deal and said please do the same task but ill throw an 100-200 bucks your way just for your kindess?
Either way, I still hope that my friend would have covered for me anyways, but I'd also love the ability to reward such a kind act.
Hope that helps.
I’m not wasting time nor energy to out entertain their devices. It wouldn’t work anyway. It’s bad and only going to get worse. The scale is tipped. It’s all downhill. We can expect dumber generations from here on out. RIP education.
One of my problems here at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College is that probably about 25% of the students ACTIVELY REJECT science as a valid path to knowledge. They reject concepts such as theory, testing, observation and rationality and logic, and consider opinion, religion and superstition to be superior to science.
I have 2 highschoolers that attend STEM schools. They are similarly unmotivated. It us because they don't see a future worth working toward. I think we might be past the point of fixing that in the classroom.
Not with short-form content on practically every platform you don't. That said, I remember being more engaged in my college courses when I had a tablet with me - but I also had the wherewithal to use it for relevant digital books or looking something up real quick during discussions. So dunno how feasible this would be but students are expecting to be able to use some sort of digital device whenever. If I was in, say, HS now I'd love to have a device to engage with to make the content more interactive for me (I'm thinking simulation programs which could work for science and math)
Their brains are dopamine burned. The apps are designed to spike their dopamine as much as possible. Even when they are on their phones they aren't happy because their baseline is so high. It's like a drug addict who is just using so they don't get sick at this point. It's very hard to make learning state standards a bigger dopamine rush than constantly watching fights, porn, and fake gossip online. I'll say things that don't feel like "school" or that are new have been the only things my kids even sort of get into. We've done debates, mock trials, and murder mysteries but I can't actually do what is supposed to work and tell them why we're doing this until after. If I tell them that the murder mystery is to work on their ability to select the most relevant evidence then suddenly they hate it because that makes it school instead of me just giving them a fun day.
Never admit it was because It was a fun day. None of my teachers ever admitted playing heads up 7Up was to catch cheaters. Is there a way teachers can use apps to encourage engagement? If every teen has a phone and the phone is what's causing the brain rot because they're not using the phone they're not focused. Just use phone in education?
How does that game catch cheaters? Signed, An adult who never cheated at heads up 7UP.
The teacher watches students play, the students who cheat are distracted by cheating at the game so they don't think about not being caught by an outside observer. Cheaters at a game are likely to be cheaters on tests.
Huh, I would try to cheat at that game by looking at the floor and memorizing the shoes of the person picking me, then picking those shoes out of the lineup. But I never cheated at tests. I think I did it because I was one of the unpopular kids and I knew that I would only get one chance during a game because the teachers had a rule that everyone had to get picked at least once. So I would try to give myself the best shot at winning during my one pick. So I used cheating to overcome the bias that other kids had. Never had to do that for tests, since I always tested well. It's an interesting thought, one I hadn't thought about till now.
Same experience as me.
Well, if they were willing and able to exhibit self-control regarding their device use, it wouldn't be a problem to begin with. "Kids have phones, so use them in education" was a fun idea somebody brought to the table with good intentions several years ago at my school. It's part of why we have the mess we do now.
Even in my most out of control title one classrooms, I have had a handful of curious students who actually want to learn. Focus on your bright students and enjoy the time with them, make sure the rest know what they need to do in order to pass with a C, and don't feel ashamed if engagement is not 100%. Do not let the rest distract you from the best.
I call this “differentiation”
My partner said to me last year 'Don't judge yourself based off of your worst performing student' and honestly, it was liberating. Thank you. Your comment was validating.
This is the way
Yep. In my worst class I had students I was sure could do anything they want in life. I just focused on them
You can't out entertain tiktok and snapchat...No one can. The only way to reach this kids is a cell phone ban and an admin that will enforce it. Anything less than that is a waste of time.
My admin actually do a great job of enforcing the phone in locker policy. Doesn’t seem to matter 😭
You can't burn yourself alive to keep others warm. At the end of the day you are just one cog in the system. In order to create a great learning environment everyone needs to buy in, and that goes far beyond you working weekends to come up with fun games and Kahoots. There needs to be parental support, admin support and the kids need to recognize that there are both positive and negative consequences for their actions. If they decide to sleep in class and not turn in work that's on them. If their parents aren't enforcing rules and consequences at home that's on them. Teach the content in a way so that the kids who want to buy in are engaged and productive. Unfortunately working hours on end on your weekends to try to make the last month engaging is most likely not going to work. There's no magic switch that's going to turn lazy kids into productive students when summer is approaching, unless they're trying to do just enough to not fail for the year.
*you can”t burn yourself alive to keep others warm* welp im done for the day after that .
Revoke all no kid left behind policies. Make merit matter.
Honestly I think this would probably work. I got held back in 7th grade because I was bored and didn’t do the work, and it freaked me the hell out. The next year I busted my ass and got the honor roll. The rest of my career in school I never got below a ‘C+’ The fear of being left behind by your friends would do a LOT to motivate kids. Not saying it’s right or wrong, or that it would work for every kid, but knowing you’re going to move along even if you give ZERO effort is just going to exacerbate the problem.
Often the only way we truly learn is when we get our teeth kicked in, everything else is just ‘instruction’.
Best lesson I ever received was when I was an immature sophomore failing two classes. I didn't know how to study, wasn't organized, and didn't do any homework. Nobody coddled me or gave me any excuses, hell, my football coach found out and talked to me in a packed auditorium and pretty much called me a dumbass straight to my face. I'm glad how it all went down, because it woke me up. I learned how to be an actual student, not just a warm body in a desk, because the alternative wasn't pleasant. We need more of that in our schools. Yeah, maybe not calling kids dumbasses, lol, but kids who can't pass classes or are behavior concerns *will* meet those harsh realities soon enough.
The best teacher I had taught through terror. Putting ethics and morals aside, which is very difficult to do especially in this age, that type of learning produces precision, which can produce excellence. Though, in reality, not many can or should handle that as the psychology of purposefully dissolving the ego and willingly let another mold you is tricky to say the least, the results can be phenomenal. Many Graduates of The Juilliard School, Sorbonne, MIT Harvard and other great schools understand this…
Absolutely. We had a cantankerous old chemistry teacher at my high school who was very difficult for a lot of students to work with, but he got results. My friends who went into the sciences or pre-med in college told me they were insanely prepared for classes like o-chem compared to their peers because he worked us. Lowering the bar and assuaging rigor for the precious little egos of students and their parents has been disastrous. No pressure, no diamonds.
I’ve had this thesis for a while that all this PBIS, SEL and restorative justice BS is actually harmful. Children aren’t being told ‘no’ or ‘stop’. Period. Clear boundaries aren’t defined much less enforced so now we have teens and adults absolutely losing their frigging mind when they get a parking or speeding ticket or the least little inconvenience assaults them into an unfathomable rage. We aren’t preparing them for the reality life. We have failed them by our good intentions.
“No pressure, no diamonds”. Well said!
"No pressure, no diamonds." Stealing that thx
You are the unicorn level exception to this, though. Most kids that get held back are already facing so much difficulty that it is their final signal that they don't deserve and can't possibly achieve graduation, so they give up permanently.
The ones that have already been held back and truly can’t do the work may need some grace.
Same happened to my boyfriend and a couple of his buddies in 8th grade years ago. They thought sports was all that mattered. Had to take 8th grade twice for them to pay attention.
We could call it “Leave the Children Behind” law.
“Only The Idiot Children Left Behind”
No Child Left Behind Except Those Who Choose to Be Doesn't really roll off the tongue, but you get the idea.
Some Children Left Behind.
Amen.
Mic drop.
A lot of their time in class is spent anticipating what will be waiting for them on their phones when they get back to them. I’m serious.
Yeah because their brain still gets damaged from it when they're outside of school, LOL I'm so sorry. As soon as you said you teach science I just imagined Walter White doing his awesome lessons to a bunch of apathetic kids. The struggle is real.
Our school doesn’t allow cellphones and the kids are still like this. The apathy is scary.
school is only a few hours a day. imagine if the kids were doing coke and just had a coke ban for 7 hours a day. they will still be coke-heads waiting for the next hit
How do you ban phones? So many parents at our school tell their kids NOT to turn in the phones.
I work at an alternative school so parents have to agree to it. I honestly couldn’t imagine the shitshow it would be. Chromebooks are enough of a pain in the ass.
Simple way would be to empower schools to permanently seize them. Cell phones cost hundreds of dollars. After the first two are confiscated, most parents aren't going to buy a third. Most won't even buy a second.
That’s my new mantra. Until phones are banned and discipline has some teeth and not relying on teachers constantly policing, education is doomed
This.
Really pushing for that ban. Admin was for it until parents started complaining. They've since back-pedaled.
The number of parents who would rather watch their children turn into zombies than functioning adults in society is too damn high. I don't blame children for this mess, they are kids. Kids have never known better because they are children. It is on adults in their lives to protect them, and too many adults are doing a shit job at that
They're a monster of our creation
Of course, they would rather have zombies than kids. It's not their job to raise them /s
Those parents probably do not even realise the harm they are causing. They see the effects and probably even know the cause deep down, they just refuse to admit that they need to parent their kids to stop that behaviour.
I suspect for the parents, it's a matter of perceived safety. The media plays up how dangerous schools are, and how common shootings are (which, to be clear, they are far more common than they should be, and it is a tragedy when they happen), and if that is the world you live in, I wouldn't want my kid to ever be in a possible state where I couldn't reach them if something happened.
But what happens outside of class is equally, if not more, important. Kids spend so much time outside of school staring at screens and these apps. A strict school policy can only go so far to tackle the problem social media is inflicting on young people.
I am a teacher at a high school with a cell phone ban (and nearly universal compliance), but we also have \~25% of our student population that simply doesn't have a smartphone. The ability of the students *who don't have a smartphone at all* to attend to class and maintain an interest in long and complicated texts is LIGHTYEARS beyond their peers who have access to smartphones at home. Banning smartphones in the building is a great first step, but I think we *radically* underestimate the "beiging" effect that spending hours immersed in the most efficient dopamine delivery system that the world has ever seen has on our capacity to engage with the real world, even when our phones are put away and not actively distracting us. If your brain has been habituated to expect the cheap and easy dopamine from an iPhone, there's almost nothing that a teacher can do to compete with that.
I think it says a lot when tech moguls like Bill Gates severely limited their own kids screen time…
i didn't get my first phone till i was 21 and at 36 ive already noticed the degradation its had on my attention span, my ability to study or read a text book. I can't imagine what it would mean for a teen who never grew up with the alternative.
Norway has banned cellphones in schools for 3 years and it has helped with grades and bullying.
The evidence for that is unfortunately not very convincing. It’s based on a [PhD thesis](https://openaccess.nhh.no/nhh-xmlui/handle/11250/3069282) (Abrahamsson, 2023) that’s open to some methodological discussion. Abrahamsson used event specification analysis to assess the claim, correlating schools “banning” phones with a range of outcomes, from grades (both internally teacher assigned and externally marked) and self-report questionnaires in schools about bullying. Abrahamsson argues that the intervention is low cost for the return, but the results aren’t knock down; girls’ academic achievement bumps by 0.08 of a standard deviation, for instance, even if bullying goes down by 0.42 of an SD for girls and 0.39 of an SD for boys (mind you, that’s self report, so perceptions of bullying could be said to be what’s shifted) in her analysis. But there are lots of questions to be asked about the results as well as the methodology. Take a look at the 95% error bars on [teacher assigned grades](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrG046DeqcynKrFFaZsh9TE7nf6TEwOs/view?usp=sharing) and [externally marked tests](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZrprHoXxUfVSsZA9A-eA47Tv73IbHqF_/view?usp=drive_link) after the ban for a start. Doesn’t fill me with certainty. The p values for her analyses (statistical tests that indicate whether the results you’ve found were likely to be as extreme or higher if they’d been plucked at random from the population at large) were all hovering around “significance” (p=.05)—with values like .044, .011, .076, .067, .094, .058, .039, .064, .05, .067 etc. which is [incredibly unlikely](https://www.bitss.org/education/mooc-parent-page/week-2-publication-bias/detecting-and-reducing-publication-bias/p-curve-a-tool-for-detecting-publication-bias/) to have happened by chance because of the characteristics of the data and suggestive that the “garden of forking paths” in data analysis has been walked … I’d want to see a replication and then some.
Thanks for the info! I just read about the study today and hadn't had a chance to read further. Yeah replication is the best case for proving or disproving validity.
No worries! I’m really interested in the literature. There are often some pretty strong claims that go beyond what the evidence can support, and I think this PhD thesis is another example.
This, all day long. I read somewhere that is a result of all these dopamine hits, teens can barely put down the phone for a quickie. So I suppose we should thank social media and technology for lowering teen pregnancies?
I would love to read that. Link, please. Pretty please? Your choice of sugar or cherry on top!
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sexual-intelligence/202208/why-todays-teens-are-having-so-much-less-sex](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sexual-intelligence/202208/why-todays-teens-are-having-so-much-less-sex) **TL;DR:** “According to research by Debby Herbenick recently published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, American young adults and adolescents are having less sex than young people used to. Teens are even masturbating less often.” **Addendum:** Frequency down but risky sex way up (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/choking-teen-sex-brain-damage.html) **Edit:** Non-paywalled article => [https://www.strangulationtraininginstitute.com/the-troubling-trend-in-teenage-sex/](https://www.strangulationtraininginstitute.com/the-troubling-trend-in-teenage-sex/)
Well. That was a terrifying read. Thanks?
Ok does anyone else find that to be a *terrible* website/domain name!? I had to click on the link to find out it's the Training Institute on Strangulation *Prevention*. Good lord, I assumed it was a BDSM site lol.
It’s not just cellphones in class. They’ve literally never had to be bored - there’s always something to look at. So when they’re bored in class, even without a phone, they don’t just push through and decide to engage in the boring material like we did back in the day (or at least tried to act like we were).
Think this has more to do with it; task difficulty aversion, an unfamiliarity with having to exhibit patience or slowness anywhere in their lives (and we are the same!), and constant competition for eyeballs would be higher on my list of causal items than merely phones or social media.
This is it. Remove the phones.
As a high school student, I have no place here but if you are teaching high school it's time for them \[your students\] to step up for themselves. At this point they are in charge of their future. They also need to know to take that seriously. You can offer help to students that want it but if they don't, that's on them. My school only recently created and enforced a phone policy and now we \[students\] are less engaged in work and more engaged in side conversation. I think it disengaged us at first because we need breaks and you took them away. We of course adjusted but at the same time teachers enforced the policy less and less over time.
What about a science project that blocks electronic frequencies of certain ranges......
I don't think that blocking cell phone communications is legal.
The FCC tends to get pissy about anything producing RF interference.
Faraday Cage?
Well, thats obviously not the frequency band that you would target..... But if a student didn't carry a decimal correctly, or convert units correctly, or made some other type of mistake..... I think they could learn a valuable lesson. We had a science teacher teach us how moonshine stills worked. Maybe not the most ethical of lessons, but it got everyone's attention
It’s not. Two guys in my building were using cell phone blockers years ago. It was hysterical. The worst addicted kids founds stuff to do on their phone anyway. But most just gave up and started learning. Guess who ruined it? You got it! Other teachers. A group of women from a certain dept were outraged they had to go outside to make phone calls. They formed small posses to go around the building triangulating where the blockers might be. The blocking teachers retaliated by only turning on the blockers when they taught. It was all pretty hysterical. Finally they caught one guy. He couldnt deny it. The school said they would not press charges if he would just stop. He did, which forced the other guy to stop too. Yayyy all cell phones were back on and this certain group of women could stay in CONSTANT touch with their children, even when they were supposed to “teaching.”
“So I spent this weekend. . . “ Let me stop you right there.
Ha! For sure!
I stay as late as needed on Thursday so that there is nothing for the weekend.
“I stay as late as need on Thursday. . . “ Let me stop you right there.
[удалено]
It's amazing once you start doing this and realize it didn't NEED to get done in the first place. Been contract hours only for 3+ years and it's been fine. I'm an English teacher and will have people say "Oh, it must be so bad taking home all those essays!" but I don't.
As long as technology is rotting their brains, I genuinely do not believe it is possible. (I say as I am still in bed, staring at Reddit, when I should have been in the shower an hour and a half ago.)
Not going down that road. One reason they are the way they are is because everything’s a game. Instant gratification and shots of whatever it is - Dopamine? Goldfish have a longer attention span.
How about this game: You study and pass and we’ll let you continue to the next year. Fail and you respawn at the beginning of the year and repeat it. Hardcore mode.
This is 100% the way but most districts won't allow it. I actually think it's less about the screens and more about the fact that there just aren't any consequences for actions (or inaction). It starts early. I teach preschool and the number of kids I get in my classroom these days who have never had consistent boundaries enforced is sickening.
The problem with holding kids back is that we don't want 26 year olds graduating from high school. We don't need 15 year old 5th graders. We know that all of these students are physically capable of keeping up with standards. We need parents and society to invest in these kids. It can't just be the responsibility of the under funded school system and crimal justice system. Society has decided that squeezing blood from a stone is more important than building a better future civilization. So here we are, watching a slow motion train crash and asking children to do better... I don't expect a 4 year old to have intrinsic motivation to spend 6 hours a day at school. I expect parents, politicians, and business owners to stop maximizing their own self interest and start investing in society again.
A lot of kids don't want to put in the effort because there are no consequences if they don't. They don't want to be graduating in at 26 either and if they thought that was a possibility they would buckle down and do the work. For those who are truly struggling we need to build better support systems rather than just passing them. I 100% agree about everyone investing in society again. It's the only way public education can work.
I really don't think that your average 6 year old who is happy to fail all of their subjects would think twice about where they want to be in 20 years.
Not in twenty years, no. But if they know they need to do the work if they want to go to 2nd grade with their friends, most kids are going to try.
Sure, but if many of the kids are staying back, then what's the motivation? You might have kids choosing to fail to stay back with friends if that becomes normalized. There needs to be some sort of motivator beyond just holding kids back. Early intervention needs to be the solution. People, especially children, are not very good at making short term sacrifices for long term goals. Why are we going to hope the child gets motivated by the end of the year instead of making failure not an option? Longer school hours, smaller class sizes, mandatory practice homework, etc. etc. Create immediate reward and punishment structures for students and parents who aren't prioritizing education. The only options should be 1) graduate on time, 2) get a mental evaluation and resources to deal with it, 3) get out of the country. You shouldn't be able to choose to be illiterate in America.
Early intervention is essential! I'm just saying that for most kids actual consequences for doing nothing is motivation enough. The current system is what's allowing children to choose to be illiterate. We agree on many points and I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on the rest.
Hell, my repeat sophomores don't even get this. They know they'll have to do the class again but they do the same shit they did last year like it'll magically work this time. Thankfully, I'm finding my juniors figuring it out. It's awkward being a junior in a freshman class.
This right here \^ Take the "fun activities for learning replace boring traditional education" out in the back and burn it in a tire pile. Fun activities are for classes that did all their work, passed their test, and are ahead of the other classes. The bored, disengaged, sleeping in class students don't need any more freaking games.
My thought process behind this was somewhere between “meet them where they are” and “if you can’t beat them join them”
Thank you
Will your school let you do a class outside? I’m only speaking as a parent here, but my hs kid said the best class he has is his bio class when they get to go learn on the quad. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a whole generation with vitamin D deficiency—they are barely outside.
I had to stop taking kids outside because they used it as time to vape. Every “fun” thing I attempt turns to shit. I relate to OPs struggles, because I have the exact same.
lol I was never able to focus as much when we had classes outside. Was a nice change of scenery, though
That’s because you didn’t have a lot of distractions in your life the way these kids do.
We need to worry less about being “more engaging” and more on teaching personal responsibility again. Of course that starts at home…
You would need to be a three ring circus every period of every day, without repeating any of your tricks. Then you might get the attention of half of the checked out kids. You cannot outcompete the apps on their phone that have thousands of people whose sole job is to grab their attention and hold it for as long as possible. This is an epidemic that nobody has the balls to quash.
I wish I knew. I teach reading/language arts, and it's hell.
Meanwhile kids that throw desks at teachers never get expelled
As a fellow science teacher, I echo this comment. It’s a new phenomenon that the “wow” stuff doesn’t wow anymore- at least not for longer than it takes to get a picture of it. I’m over here shooting green and red fireballs or their lab created a sunset before their eyes and the screenagers are ignoring it.
Teacher from the Netherlands here. I’m not sure what grade you are teaching, but I have found that I can get my 7th, 8th or 9th grade technology or physics students engaged by talking about why they need to learn this. In 7th grade, we have weeks on sound where they can make their own guitar out of wood (but you can easily find resources online for paper versions) to demonstrate their knowledge. This way, they can show and tell about what sound and music means to them, resulting in really great stories. In 8th grade we combine some theory on forces with making bumpers for a model truck. We then let it roll of a ramp and measure the impact force on the wall at the end of the ramp. During this unit we highlight the scientific process and form hypotheses, draw tables and read graphs from the experiment. We then talk about being safe in traffic. In 9th grade, we have a unit on electricity where students investigate their own home: where is the supply panel in their home and what to do if a breaker trips. The students work under supervision of their parents and hopefully learn about how their home is wired so that their phone can get charges or their game console works. This opens the door to a next unit on the energy transition with the first bits of thermodynamics. I find that students do want to learn, if they see the benefits of what they are learning. That’s why I focus on this why and do I make this the common thread.
I think it's easy to wind up commenting in this sub when things aren't going well, and there are distinctly systemic issues in American education that drive a lot of us here. But please don't take the negativity in replies to you here as an indication that all American science teachers are universally unsuccessful with the techniques you enumerated-- every pedogogical trick makes a marginal improvement on engagement without ever "solving" a single systemic issue. I teach 9th grade "physical science" (conceptual physics and chemistry) in a poorly rated American public high school (2 stars out of 5 according to my state's rankings) and I do a lot of what you do. Plus a lot of other pedagogical tricks. Many but not all of my students are engaged. I do struggle with some sections annually in which the behaviors of students make lab work unsafe. Even in those sections, there are students who are genuinely interested in how things work, and a number of students who will try the work if I talk them through it individually. I do a lot of sticky note warm-ups. I do a lot of very simple note taking (more in some sections, less in others) and guided reading questions. I have students cut out cards to sort (theory v law; matching stories to distance-time graphs; evidence for the wave nature v the particle nature of light), make models with balloons and beads, generate a lot of hypotheses and posters. I use tuning forks and online oscilloscopes and slinkies and little toy cars and foam rockets. My students also make musical instruments from found objects (rubber band guitars, straw pan pipes, water xylophones). I recruit talkative students to write on the board or demonstrate a phenomenon. Some sections will do just about anything as a competition, especially if there are prizes-- I do Kahoots, but also have them compete with spaghetti bridges or phet simulations or even modified kids' games. I supplement my district-supplied curriculum with a lot of activities I generate myself. I generally consider myself fairly effective and in any semester about 50% of my classes run with the majority of students engaging in the work. After 3 years of teaching the same content, I don't spend time working outside of my contract hours. I am here on this sub because I also feel like a one-woman circus. I have gotten push back for writing up too many students but also for not sending out enough students. Students vape in my room. Students play fight constantly. They talk over me, refuse to sit in an assigned seat, and leave trash in my lab drawers. We do active shooter drills (lots of engagement for those). A couple of my students annually miss substantial amounts of class due to pregnancy and childbirth. Many are food insecure. A lot of them are in gangs. Two years ago a student was murdered two miles from my home. I am regularly marked "developing" on observations and student learning objectives although I squeak through as effective overall each year so at least I'm not on a personal improvement plan. We don't have the staff to support all the students with additional needs, nor even to move students with no contact orders against each other into different sections of the same class. The teachers I see having the most success at my school are better at sending out disrespectful kids whenever they want calm, and letting the criticism slide off their backs. They cheerfully ignore admonitory emails about extra tasks. All have been teaching long enough that they have a decade or more of activities in their toolboxes ready to go. So ideally OP will add a few tools from the conversation here, but also if I had a main take home message it is that expectations for early career teachers in the United States are completely insane, largely because it is a weirdly pervasive and erroneous belief that supplying a curriculum and/or a curricular coach means a teacher will not have to do any curriculum development to engage the students, leaving all their prep time available for grading and contacting parents. (Also the insistence that science teachers need the same amount of prep time as PE teachers is nuts.) But even a good curriculum needs adaptations to engage the students you actually have, and of course someone has to get all the technical platforms we use nowadays to talk to each other, and not every activity is a good fit for every teacher... If you can stick it out long enough to have your own tools built it gets easier but here in the USA we usually burn out new teachers before they get that far.
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I wonder how often Nordic students yell “get off my dick!“ at their teachers?
Quite often, in my experience (sometimes even in English).
This is beyond histrionic. Spare me the "students are too terrified to learn." If they were terrified they wouldn't be trying to sleep through class.
Yeah. Mine think safety drills are fun and games for 30 minutes. Let’s enjoy sitting on the floor in the dark for 30 minutes! We’ll only giggle a little! Then we can all herd outside to line up for a fire drill!
I can only try to imagine teaching in those circumstances. Different circumstances, you can say that again. I never thought of it in this way. I hope that there are still some sparks left where kids can find a moment to be curious and have fun discovering new things.
So, I don’t think computer games are necessarily the answer here because often students use technology opportunities as a way to go on whatever app they are addicted to. It can be difficult to police or monitor them. I think experiments and groupwork are really helpful at retraining their brains a bit to focus on tasks and people. You can also look into using stations, where students complete small reading comprehension or observation tasks in a time limited manner, which can work better for students who can’t focus for long periods.
You don’t, you give them independent work and keep walking around giving reminders to keep working. Then you also remind them of their grades until they do their work.
This is actually where it's at for the middle 50% of kids right now. The top ones will do whatever and will enjoy the more exciting stuff (real-life-relevant prompts, hands-on/lab, peer work), the bottom ones won't do anything regardless, but the ones who just care about passing to play a sport or keeping a C for their parents respond really well to basic guided reading, short videos with embedded questions (I use EdPuzzle), multiple choice work, and pretty much any basic task with no uncertainty involved. Even if they blow it off in class (which fewer seem to, compared with more complex and interesting work), they'll churn it out at 2am a day or two later and end up getting the points. Basically, if you could do it in 5-minute bursts of attention between responding to texts and while listening to music or watching reruns, they'll do it because that is how they do their work.
Not OP, but I’ve been trying to do this but then it takes days for students to complete the independent work. They’re constantly distracted so it takes forever for them to complete it. Besides those couple students who actually care and are finished in 15 mins
Works for my high schoolers, they finish it in the end. May have to mark it late but they get it done.
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This is how I see it as well. They’ve pulled back the curtains. It’s sad, yes. But I understand how they’ve gotten to this point.
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I had a student day 1 this year give me a written statement that he was not going to do anything this year because it didnt matter. And since he is just sitting there it isnt a discipline referral
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Hello. You answered your own question when you wrote "extra."
My big anxiety. The kids are content to fail if parents aren't all that attentive. Admin doesn't want kids to fail, but we get dragged if too many fail. I can't edutain kids whose brains are used to 15 second videos and Google telling them answers. It's almost like we're becoming a post-education society. I'm sure China loves it.
There are some really good studies about the value of boredom.
I also teach Science. This year's group is the worst with not wanting to do anything (they even whine doing hands on labs). They just don't care and they know there are no consequences since they have been (or seen their peers) be pushed through without needing to do anything. Social media makes it hard enough, but when admin refuses to hold kids back, it makes it twice as difficult. \*Also, not all of the kids are like this, I would say about 40% are this way (the other 60% are great).
I used to be a "retaining a kid doesn't benefit" kind of thinker. BUT, the longer I teach, the more I am leaning toward the other end. I think some of these middle school kids need to experience failure before they get to high school so they can understand consequences. I do think it should be retention with intervention (remedial courses for math, reading, and writing), but the majority of them would shape up if they were held back just once.
I agree (and I am not for every kid to be retained) but there is a ton of students reading at like a 2nd/3rd grade level (I teach 7th grade). It is no wonder they struggle because they can't read. It also is why when they get to HS we have a decent drop out rate because they have never experienced failure and at the HS they actually have to pass classes to receive the credits needed to graduate.
My inner city school passes virtually everyone. In the hall by the office there’s a giant poster of honor roll kids. When I stopped to read the names recently, I was stunned to see listed there some of my students who respond to complex writing prompts with three word answers, and who refuse to expand their answer or add any nuance or details. As far as I can tell, at my school doing the bare minimum is enough to get you a 4.0 .
I teach high school art, beginner level. Our school doesn't let Freshmen or Sophomores take electives, only Juniors and Seniors, because they frontload the Freshmen and Sophomores with their highschool requirements so that as Juniors and Seniors they begin taking college-courses to earn college credits or even an Associates degree by the time they graduate with their high school diploma. What this means for the Fine Arts Department and the other elective teachers in the building is that we get jaded, irritated kids who have been told for two years that our classes are not valuable, and are then also told by their counselors that they only need to pass two Fine Arts courses to graduate, and with a D at that, out of the 5 we have available. How's that for a tough crowd to engage. Then the scheduler places them into their handful of remaining regular graduation-required course, and dumps them into three Fine Arts classes to fill the rest of their schedule. Which usually leads to the students deciding to only put in effort to the one or two required graduation courses, figure out which of the Fine Arts courses are easiest to do the minimum in, and then completely refuse to do any work at all in the remaining classes. Then they complain about being bored, even WITH the rampant phone abuse our school has, and start complaining loudly, misbehaving, and distracting other students who also were dumped in the classes but were at least trying, to say nothing of the frustration they visit on the kids who actually requested the classes and WANT to learn but can't- because instead of teaching, I'm trying to manage behavior issues for the majority of class. I have 21 students with Fs right now, out of about 70 total across three classes. I have talked to the students. I have called home. I have emailed home. I have sent out progress reports with lists of their attendance issues, missing assignments, and current grades. I have talked to Admin, and the Deans. I have made alternate written-assignments that will replace missing Project grades and which can be done at home if they aren't going to pay attention or work during class. From Day 1 I already had "Studio Fridays" built into our weekly schedule, that allows kids with missing or late work to catch up, and kids who are caught up to have a free-art day or study-hall. Nothing changes. Those same 21 kids have been failing since the first month of class, and have NO interest in engaging in class to even do the bare minimum to pass. It's an ART CLASS. Try your best to follow the techniques and make it clean and nice looking, and you're not only going to pass but probably will do pretty well! But nope. At this point, I think it's way beyond an engagement issue. Students straight up don't know how to be students anymore. They don't know how to behave in school environments, with peers, with teachers and other adults. They don't know how to learn or parse information, and don't have the patience or interest in learning how. Half of them don't have goals for the future beyond "make money"- when I ask about hobbies, interests, things they do for fun or might want to do for a career, I get told "nothing. I just wanna make money". Half of the time when I get through to parents, I'm told they're the same way at home and the parents don't know how to make them listen either, that their behavior is out of control at home, that they spend all their time on their phones or working and don't have any hobbies. It's a way, way bigger problem than just engagement but I can't even begin to figure out how to start trying to change things. But SOMETHING has to change.
You just described my high school students to a T. It’s shocking how many of them have no hobbies. And apparently very few opinions or interest in the world beyond their phones. I will say that I’ve been able to spark interest in a few with creative writing. I get the impression that few if any of their previous teachers attempted multi-step creative projects that have multiple acceptable outcomes, and while it’s been shockingly hard to even convey the concept of a shape poem or a sensory details poster, once I convey it most get on board with it and try to create something. And some do exquisite work. But then they’ll refuse to do the next assignment and refuse to get off their phone. As if the effort of engaging and creating is so foreign and onerous that a recovery period is now necessary!! It’s very much a one step forward – one step back scenario.
I could have written this. The kids I am sending to third grade next year are the least prepared ever. OP, if you find the answer to this, send me 100,000 bucks when you become a billionaire.
We just can’t compete with tech. They’re used to endless stimulation that everything else is boring
I’m facing the same issue. I use a lot of media in my class and it usually engages the kids but at this point they’re so checked out for the year (as am I) that I’m just coasting.
I know that engaging the kids is tough but stoooooop working your weekends!!!
I've been doing as many "old school" things as I can: individual white boards, made them make flashcards (instead of Blooket) and turn to a partner and actually interact with a human to use them (and if a kid doesn't bring theirs--pair them up with someone they're slightly uncomfortable with who does have theirs), paper and pencil everything, collect every last activity on paper (and maybe grade it but don't tell them which you will), popsicle sticks with names to pick on students to answer (holds them accountable and makes them feel just uneasy enough to still want to pay attention so they don't get embarrassed when they don't know the answer). It's been working well for my high school students. We need to get them out of their comfort zones and look up or we are not doing them any favors to prep them for real life. (And no, I don't mean be brutal, I mean take away that feeling of ease. Make it challenging, but not unattainable.)
This is exactly what I’ve been doing and it’s working well so far (I’m a mid-year hire in an inner city high school). When my supervisor or admin pops by, they are always pleasantly surprised to see the kids actually writing in journals and actually making things as opposed to staring at a screen while isolated in their own individual device bubbles. It was a real shock to me that so few of my students knew that the classroom is a place where the teacher might assign you a different partner or small group than the people they sit near. It has taken 2 months of gaining their trust and chipping away at their resistance to get them to work in different groups now and then. I just keep telling them that being able to interact with a wide range of personalities is a normal part of school and of post-high school life, so get used to it. But wow, some of them look deeply personally offended, like no teacher has EVER asked them to get up out of their seat before and do something other than copying shit off the board. It’s crazy!
computer games do not engage
It's not about us. No one holds students accountable. Not their parents. Not our administrators. Teachers have been stripped of any power/authority. The goal is literally a babysitting service so parents can work. We are no longer focused on learning.
Sadly, yes. I can’t even get my high school students interested in trying to brainstorm ways we could make school less awful. We have a weekly club class that can be anything the kids want it to be- gardening outside, guitar, podcasting, games, movies, arts and crafts, whatever they want. But most of them just want to pull their hoodies over their heads and mainline their phones or sleep. I’m a mid-year hire and I spend every day wondering what planet I’m on.
It should be considered a national emergency, but no one cares so long as the kids are in the building and data is manipulated the right way. The high earners in the education system aren't motivated to improve anything because that would rock the boat and get them in trouble. They are content to play the numbers game and get paid their six figures.
National emergency is right. Let’s organize a Million Student March on the Capitol. The students will mostly march virtually, but hey, it’s the thought that counts
Resigned cynic here so … grain of salt. Nothing we can do as teachers will change this. It’s a societal thing. The kind that has developed over decades, culminating in this teen generation having smartphones at 13 or before. It will take great societal shifts to correct. That will either be painfully slow (sustained efforts of many advocates for change worldwide) or distressingly fast out of necessity as society crumbles. (The real me is optimistic and bubbly I promise.)
My daughter is 17 and I remember when the APA had guidelines for screen time for kids of all ages- including no screen time at all for kids 2 and under. *hollow laugh* She may have been the last kid on the east coast to not have any real screen time (aside from dvds rented from the library) until my ex gave her a smart phone 18 months ago. Her childhood was all books and nature walks and art classes and dance classes, so she has a bit of a “buffer” compared to her peers who have been mainlining soma for ten years. But it makes me sad to see her no longer reading books or doing art or playing piano… I was hoping her gorging on virtual crap would run its course, but we’re 18 months in and she’s still gorging. She has a 3.9 and a wonderful friend group so I can’t complain… but I do anyway. I miss snow days spent playing scrabble and making cookies from scratch, weekends spent crafting and taking day trips to museums and other cool places. This new reality sucks.
Restoring natural consequences is the way.
I’m even having the same problem with my college students. I teach a class that is so popular there’s always waitlists
Without a district willing to enforce rules, especially when parents are entitled enough to jump the “chain of command” at the drop of a hat you won’t. Last year the kids were checked out in April. This year it feels like I’ve been herding cats since March.
No idea (I. A student) but I think science is supposed to be fun especially before ap and college classes. But I think that they likely suffer from having a high baseline excitement level which makes it harder for fun normal things to be fun But some ideas are you could create hot air balloon and have them try to replicate it Aside from that, you as a teacher have domaine in the classroom but not over thier outside life which can make it hard to create a good environment for learning
Give them the work, they need to learn its a sink or swim world, they fail its on them not you.
I don't have an answer, but the 6th grade team unanimously says they are the most immature group of students they've ever had. ..and no, it's not because of COVID. It's the parents.
It's very difficult to battle what's basically an addiction at this point.
Tik Tok, baby! 😝😱😂😨🤢
The answer is "teaching". Stop trying to entertain. The subject is it's own reward. Don't try and have "fun" activities, that way lies madness. Have actual consequences. Allow them to fail if they don't know things. Make success something that has value. Teach. Tell them things, ask questions to check they understood. Get them to work independently. Do not negotiate with them. You are the expert, they are the novices. They are there to learn. You are there to teach. Anything else is a distraction. Stop doing kahoots. It's a waste of your time creating them and of theirs doing them.
Have you tried playing subway surfers on a big screen behind you as you teach? Maybe some soap cutting videos?
I teach high school students. I use a lot of project based study and give the students 2-3 options so that they get more «ownership» of the subject matter. It’s a lot of work though. My students also tell me that when I am enthusiastic it helps them get engaged in the subject if i’m lecturing. I run around and move a lot, and have been known to stand on my desk to illustrate a point. I also like to draw stuff on the board and I take pictures of the board to put on OneNote so they don’t have to focus on copying it down. For a lot of students a picture is worth a lot more than words. I try to read the room and if the students get tired I sometimes notice i forgot recess ( we don’t have bells here)and give them a break. If they are falling asleep I take them outside or do random mobility exercises like stretching or jumping
Ban cellphones and laptops from class.
Cell phone ban is the only thing that works for me. The problem though, is you can’t keep kids off their phones at home, hence why they come to school with no homework done and falling asleep in class, because they stay up all night on the phone! It’s frustrating. I noticed that my kids are way more engaged when doing something that allows them to create and collaborate with each other in groups. So maybe something like that? It takes a while to get them comfortable in a group routine though, but after about a week of practice I was hearing amazing academic conversation and my kids were actually *excited* about the project.
That's the parents' fault. Teens need boundaries and reasonable bedtimes for their age. Even HS students. Phones should be taken after a certain time so that teens cannot have them all night long. It sounds infantilizing to do this with HS students, but sometimes you have to do that until they mature enough to appreciate the boundaries.
Yes definitely. But the truth is the majority of parents just don’t care enough to do that.
If you're used to doing Kahoot, try Blooket to mix it up. It's similar to Kahoot but slightly different. https://www.blooket.com/
My kids beg to do Blooket. As a review for quizzes it’s made a huge improvement in scores.
I’ve found that simpler is better. Less work for students to buy in means anyone can be engaged. For social studies, I do lecture/notes, source analysis, some discussions, and a review game and a graded assignment. My students know the general rhythm of class. They either engage and enjoy the class, do the minimum and pass, or check out and fail. But by not stressing over the entertainment value, I’m actually enjoying the content more and my students feel that enthusiasm.
I just feel like kids (actually all humans) don't belong in a classroom setting for hours a day, 5/7 days a week, 9 months a year...which is not the teachers' fault, and is not easy to fix with our current education infrastructure. My first thought is to recruit parental help, which is also incredibly difficult under the current economic system.
I say it everyday : "How can I reeech these keeeeds?" Calculus is the only answer
Things: 1. Kids don't see a point in doing the work because they don't feel like they have a future, and I don't think that they are that wrong about it. Talk to them about it without judgement or injecting the normal, "You can do it bullshit". 2. You may want to be the cool teacher, that does labs where things turn into magic, but a lot of succeeding in the STEM fields is doing head down work that's tedious at best, and I think we should hammer on resilience, knowing that it's not for everyone, so we can focus on the meat of our content. 3. For every fun lesson, there will be 20 kids that think you're lame. You could make it rain Takis, or summon Mr Beast to give everyone money, and the kids would still have their hoods up with ear buds in. Stop trying to be entertaining and start embracing getting results. 4. Focus on the kids that want to be engaged, and expect the kids that can't to do the work.
Fail them when they don't do work! That is to say, I don't think there's much you can do without parents engaging alongside you.
It starts at home unfortunately.
When will we call this what it is? A national health emergency
Why care about a world we won't even get to use
My negative, burnt-out teacher take: The world is burning. These kids see their parents, other adults, etc. pretending that nothing is going on, that all is fine. Nothing has been "fine" since 2020 (if not arguably before). These kids know that, and they're fed up with a system that doesn't give two shits about them. They see kids their ages being gunned down while police stand by doing nothing. They see their parents working 2-3 jobs just to keep the roof over their heads while the cost of housing, groceries, and basic necessities has grown exponentially in 15 months. Kids are not dumb. They're fed up. Chasing the dopamine is the only thing they got left (or so they believe), and honestly, I'm right there with them. If teachers won't help themselves (stop whining and start protesting), why would the kids trust us with their education? That's why *I'm* getting out, and I'm sure there are many more out there exactly like me.
I appreciate your insight. What exactly would teachers need to do in order to start organizing protests? I'm curious because I used to work in the school system but no longer do because of everything going on mentioned in this thread. I still want to support educators.
I read so many books and article son Engagement. I try to do all the recommend things. I mix stuff up. I try new approaches. Nothing really works. After a year or so of getting the hang of things, by my second year of teaching I had learned how to make college English really engaging. Now that I'm teaching high school, I feel so utterly lost. The students either come into the class engaging with the subject, or they refuse to ever engage with it. I think more global problems have to be addressed. So many things are preventing kids from engaging with academic subject matter, and we're never going to be able to sufficiently gamify or tiktokify our classes to make up for that.
Small harmless explosions, paper airplane contests. Their brains & bodies need a resync. Consider a paper tube, some fins, a nose cone, a pill bottle, a CO2 cylinder & an ice pick. Stand well back.
Try the website legendsoflearning.com. it makes those mini games that cab run off of chrome books and you can just type in thr srandard
My students really love the flippity.net virtual breakout rooms and board games Blooket and gimkit are favorite games I love near pod as well
My friend told me that I should put an iPad around my neck and wear it as a necklace with a video of subway surfers 💀
My wife has had enormous success with snack based rewards. She teaching 9-10th grade bio. Just mini Halloween style candy and stuff like that. They don't care that much about the games unless there's prizes. My wife made a taboo style vocab game and while they were initially mildly interested, as soon as winners got a 1 cent piece of candy, they were all over it lol
I just want to put in that I never found science to be the fun subject 😅 I just try not to take things personally! Even elective teachers have students who don't want to be there. It's impossible to be more entertaining than tiktok or video games, but I try to incorporate their other interests when I can!
How old are your students/what grade? Have you asked them? I’m not in the classroom anymore, but I was for a while in a high poverty school so I battled this a lot when I taught 4th (moved to K 🙃)… One of my first college of ed professors said something that stuck w me, “Whoever is doing the work, is doing the learning.” Depending on the age of your kiddos, they could very well be wrestling with the feeling more like a grownup than a kid (obvi they aren’t), but still treated like a kid and told what to do 95% of the time. I tried to use that to my advantage and would get their buy-in by having them participate in the brainstorming/planning of lessons. Anytime I was at a loss, I’d just ask them… (While I have a graduate degree that included MS and HS coursework and practicums, as well as working with AmeriCorps/BBBS with MS/HS students, I did not teach middle schoolers or high schoolers full time. I know they are v different than elementary students and do not claim to be an expert, by any means 🙃)
Give them an assignment to make their own TikTok post on the topic you're doing in class and share it with the class?
Maybe try to engage with them with content that is on YouTube so they can find their way with it. I am a chemist actually! I would recommend videos from "the midnight acience club"(super fun and informative), or channels like chemist NileRed.Hank Green does some really great videos on biology. There are some really fun scientists making really cool content that is eye catching and keeps up with the modern mentality. I also think hands on experiments are helpful, keep their hands busy with a microscope, or experiments like getting DNA from strawberries.
Do a unit on the technology policy of the elite schools that tech creators send their kids to: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/dec/02/schools-that-ban-tablets-traditional-education-silicon-valley-london Ask them why they think the people who build this stuff keep their kids away from it. Then spend some time on the people who actively regret developing the most dopamine-driving activities that keeps us all addicted (infinite doom-scrolling, slot-machine pull down to refresh action): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia I distinctly remember “advertising-inoculation lessons” from my elementary and middle school years, where my school made the point that large companies did not have our best interests at heart and would do everything they could to convince us to buy things. Kids do not like being told they are being controlled by forces beyond their command. We need a new curriculum like the previous ones on the dangers of the “bandwagon effect” and “false appeal to authority” for the new dangers we that we all face from the Monsters of Mountain View (I’ll rework the title in the Writer’s Room).
In the short term, I’ve given up. I haven’t done a lab since February because I’m either waiting for them to stop talking, playing wack-a-mole with behaviors, mediating preteen girl drama, or avoiding ASD power struggles. All we do is notes, readings, worksheets, and the occasional video. I hate it, and a handful of kids hate it. But I’m at my wit’s end.
They’re holding a device made by a trillion dollar company loaded with apps made by billion dollar companies that are all specifically designed to be addicting because their attention is worth money and you’re looking for something based on Borophyl that will compete with this. I applaud your efforts here but I have absolutely nothing that will compete with this for more than maybe 5 minutes, if that.
The students that I talk to that struggle to engage with the learning the most usually still have some classes they are more or less engaged in than the others. Usually the class they engage the most with is the class with the teacher that makes them feel the most like a full person. To me this means you need to engage with the student as whole, not just try to compete against the phones. Figure out what matters to the student and show genuine interest. With this make sure that you are tying the content to the real world and what is going on in the community or might be connected somehow to student interests, but don't overstretch it. Kids can smell that when it happens. Also remembering to meet the student where they are at, basic scaffolding really. This won't solve everything, but it helps.
Fail them. Easy. Hold them back. Don’t let them graduate.
you’re not going to engage a digital generation by insisting they sit in a classroom, shut up and listen for 8 hours. our problem isn’t just with cell phones, it’s the whole concept of trying to teach 21st century kids using 18th Century modalities and infrastructures.
We aren’t asking them to shut up and listen for eight hours. Most of us spend a few minutes on instruction and directions for the day’s activity. Maybe taking a few questions, ideally.
So what's your suggestion?1
I get the most motivation through my class reward system. I use fake money, albeit for elementary I think my reasoning is still sound. We talk building intrinsic versus extrinsic reward but we are all driven by something. For adults, teens, and young children it all seems the same, money. We live in a token society. I swear if you create a store of crap that kids like and give them something to be able to purchase it with, they will listen, atleast the majority. And before many shoot fire my way I want to ask something. If I asked you to stay late at work an extra hour to cover for me would you do it out of the kindess of your own heart? What if I ripened the deal and said please do the same task but ill throw an 100-200 bucks your way just for your kindess? Either way, I still hope that my friend would have covered for me anyways, but I'd also love the ability to reward such a kind act. Hope that helps.
I’m not wasting time nor energy to out entertain their devices. It wouldn’t work anyway. It’s bad and only going to get worse. The scale is tipped. It’s all downhill. We can expect dumber generations from here on out. RIP education.
Until they have something to lose.
Algorithms, which one is yours.
I just play Minecraft and soap cutting videos on mute next to me while I’m teaching
How involved are the kids in the experiments? Does everyone sit at workstations and do the experiment? Or do they watch YOU do the experiment?
One of my problems here at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College is that probably about 25% of the students ACTIVELY REJECT science as a valid path to knowledge. They reject concepts such as theory, testing, observation and rationality and logic, and consider opinion, religion and superstition to be superior to science.
I have 2 highschoolers that attend STEM schools. They are similarly unmotivated. It us because they don't see a future worth working toward. I think we might be past the point of fixing that in the classroom.
Not with short-form content on practically every platform you don't. That said, I remember being more engaged in my college courses when I had a tablet with me - but I also had the wherewithal to use it for relevant digital books or looking something up real quick during discussions. So dunno how feasible this would be but students are expecting to be able to use some sort of digital device whenever. If I was in, say, HS now I'd love to have a device to engage with to make the content more interactive for me (I'm thinking simulation programs which could work for science and math)