Bored of Education? So are they!
Students and teachers have something in common - the feeling that education is no longer enjoyable. Ask a teacher you know (if you are not a teacher yourself) what she/he enjoys most about teaching. Enjoyment will have something to do with successfully conveying our belief that mastery of the subject(s) we teach in school really is worth students' time and attention. Now ask a student what is most enjoyable about school. It is rare for a student to express the most enjoyment being related to a core subject. (If you find a student who thinks this way, email me the story!) Students bored with a task or process are not going to attend to it very much, thus limiting the extent to which they will ever get to that stage of joy that comes from mastery, and give us the "Oh, now I get it!" we seek each academic year after year. And speaking of year after year, is not one of the most boring aspects of teaching that it is the same game repeated over and over again? If the students are the players, though, it's never the same game twice. The transactional nature of boredom is not lost on any of us. Some might say it's the ultimate obstacle in education. Interest yields effort which yields maximum possible achievement. The grades and the standards will follow. Play more. Life is good.
Here are my free printable math worksheets.
