A Teacher's Journal: They're Definitely Bored

As the interview went on, I realized that the educators on the program were in a serious state of denial. "There is real peer pressure in colleges that discourage students from looking too interested," the professor continued. "To maintain their social standing, students put on a show. While they look disinterested, they're actually quite engaged."

I figured I'd test this theory by asking a few of my former students about whether boredom was a part of their daily lives in schools. "Yup," replied Joey, a top performer in many of his classes. "I do well, but I am definitely bored."

"So you're not pretending just to look cool?" I asked.

"Nope. Sometimes classes are just completely boring," he replied.

One cause of the disconnect between students and their current coursework is that our kids are connected from the day that they're born and yet effective technology integration remains elusive in most classrooms. Consider these statistics:

Our nation's overemphasis on standardized testing doesn't help either. Teachers feeling pressure to produce results on tests are less likely to encourage inventive thinking in their rooms and more likely to emphasize simple memorization of basic facts. The old adage, "The content that gets tested is the content that gets taught" remains true---and the content getting tested simply isn't terribly complex.

Regardless of the cause, the time has come for our nation to rethink what education looks like. To continue to hold to "tried and true" instructional practices that have served teachers well for decades is to ignore the reality that our students are changing and our schools are not.