The other day I was observing my five-year-old daughter.(She is now six). When talking about school with her, she loves it and her teacher. She talks to her mother and me about what happens at school that day, and all the other goings on with her in her educational life. I teach high school kids, and it rarely seems my students enjoy school.
Which brings me to the question and the title of this blog post. Where does that spark for education go? It seems as if every day in my classroom my students always seem to dread the day at hand whether it be in my class(which I have a strong belief my class is a fun learning environment) or another class. The students just seem haphazardly going through the motions of school. After noticing the way, my daughter acts I wanted to know how can we bring the fire back for all students to have the desire to learn.
So began my informal research. I polled my students and asked them what period did they seem to dislike school and not surprising to my thought process. The vast majority of my students told me that the middle school years were the hardest for them, and they didn’t place any blame towards any teacher about their disdain for school they just stated it was possibly puberty, and the changing of their bodies are the reasons why they didn’t like school. It was also a coincidence on the “This American Life” the week after I began pondering the question. An entire episode of “This American Life” loaded in my podcast queue became dedicated to Middle School. The reporter interviewed a few students over the subject. Truly it was an enjoyable listen.
Since I have a good generalized thought, the spark of education seems to die out in Middle School how can we combat this problem? Do I have the answer? No, but maybe you or someone you know has done more extensive research than myself might have the answer. From my thought and pondering, I have come to one conclusion. Whether the students are in high, middle, or elementary school, they are still kids. Some in adult bodies but they are still kids, and we need to strive to keep them engaged in our lessons so they can be inspired by educators to continue the spark for education.
Since this topic has come up so many times in the past month, I have seriously thought about writing a book or doing more research on what needs to be done on this topic so more teachers may fight off the blues of students to keep them more engaged.
If you are interested in the Podcast episode mentioned above. You can listen to the “This American Life” episode here.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/449/middle-school
cultivateedu.com 