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school being 'boring'
was anyone NOT bored at school? i always wonder that when i see people saying they were bored in school- heck yeah i thought the school day was LONG and BORING most of the time.
with the exception of a few classes i loved, for the most part it was just waiting for the next thing to happen, right? i just always assumed most kids felt that way. i never considered if school was more challenging for you that you wouldn't be bored. i just drew the conclusion it was the result of making kids with lots of energy sit for hours on end listening to someone talk 
wdyt?
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Re: school being 'boring'
Totally. All I wanted to do was get outside and play and be free. I don't think it was b/c the material was not challenging enough.
I wasn't.
Edited: my post was annoying.
With the way that schools are today and the way that teachers should be teaching, there honestly shouldn't be a ton of bored kids, no matter when their birthday is. Granted, I haven't taught in 4 years, but when I was in the classroom, it was all about differentiation and a lot of guided independent discovery (ie- kids are doing experiments, etc to learn concepts rather than the teacher sitting there and just telling them).
For math and reading we always had groups that would work on the same skills, but at each kid's level so that, for example, we're all learning about main idea, but Susie is doing it while reading her advanced chapter book while Jane is doing it with her simple picture book because that's the level they're at.
I realize that this is in a perfect world and that not every school and not every teacher is going to do things this way (although at both of my schools, you sure better have been doing reading and math groups). But I know that if my kid was coming home every single day and telling me they were bored, I would be speaking with the teacher to see why that was (some kids are bored because the material is so far over their heads that they just zone out) and creating a plan together to fix things, not rushing into the principal's office and asking that she be moved to the next grade.
I wasn't -- I absolutely loved school and everything about it. I do know in elementary I spent a lot of "spare time" reading though when others were working still, and I had some one-on-one instruction learning math concepts, etc., ahead of the rest of the class.
As for middle school and high school, I'm with AJL that I was too busy to be bored. Hello all honors/AP classes.
6-yr-old Elena and 4-yr-old Julia.
My Blog! All about my girls and quilting
txbabs- that actualy sounds fun!
yeah, we were allowed to read quietly and i remember speeding through assignments just so i could read my books. lol
1 I'm bored. B^c subject x is boring and
2 I'm bored b/c I get it and people are asking questions when I think it should be obvious
type 1 seems unavoidable, type 2 led to a really bad attitude and bad behavior in me b/c I knew I could not listen a still get an A. I would like my kids to benefit from my mistakes
I think today's kids are a totally different breed than we were. In my head they're the "entertain me" generation. They are so used to stimulation from electronics, tvs, video games. Many of them are also spinning from the foods we're feeding them- dyes, preservatives, sugar and sodas. Of course class is boring!
Maybe it's just DSS, I dunno. He can complain about being "bored" in class all day long, but until he proves it with his grades, in the boring class is where he'll sit.
And now, after re-reading, we are probably talking about apples and oranges. Oh, to have a teenager. :P
This. My senior year of high school I did not turn in any homework and rarely went to school. I still made all A's and graduated with a 3.8. I was awfully proud until I got to college. I was not prepared at all for having to actually work to learn something. I feel like everything I learned in public high school was basic, obvious information, and was completely unprepared for college. I think the blame lies equally between myself, my school, and my parents.
I had a lot of problems with number 2. I remember getting hugely frustrated with my classmates because they didn't get it. I was in all honors/ AP/ GT classes which I guess helped, but I was still so bored. By the time I got to high school I had checked out. My grades were still great, but I sat in the back of most of my classes and read books. I also programed my graphing calculator to play blackjack and spent quite a bit of time playing that. That is when I was actually in class. I probably missed about 1/4 of my classes because I would convince my choir or theatre teacher to write me a note to leave class and come help them.
I wish that I had been challenged earlier, because by the time I got to a class that I needed to work at (calculus) I had zero work ethic and had no idea how to "learn" something. Math had just always made sense to me up until this point. I also had a hard time in college because I had never been challenged to think, just to regurgitate facts and write AP essays.
I don't think that a grade skip is necessarily the answer, I was already one of the younger kids in my grade and lacked social skills, but I think that more differentiation in the classroom is key. Babs touched on it, and I think it's getting better at the elementary level, but I struggled with it as a middle school teacher. It's just so hard to differentiate for your highest level when you have 130 kids. I was pretty good about differentiating for my special ed kids, but it's hard to do for the older higher level ones. They want to know why they have to do more work or harder work than their classmates. In high school it's even worse because they are fighting for class rank so they don't want to be challenged.
Whoever can come up with the answer tot his should write a book.
This is a great point. Since all my experience was in elementary that's all I really know. And honestly, knowing how difficult it was to differentiate for 22 kids, I can't imagine doing it for 130. Props to you MS and HS teachers.
I wasn't bored in school because the teachers worked us like crazy. There was no time to be bored.
I think that FCB has a really good point with the generation of students today needing to be entertained. In the classes I teach and TA at UT, I see even the best students taking notes on their laptops while checking email, twitter, FB, blogs, looking at their phones, etc. It's like they have to be distracted from ten directions at once or they think their heads are going to explode from boredom.
This is my experience with today's kids. And ditto about differentiating at HS for different level learners--it is so hard with 125+ kids.
Many of my kids find so many things boring. Books are boring. Sometimes making art is boring to them. It's very frustrating to come up with things to keep them intrigued. If a project takes more than 1-2 weeks, then they are bored. They just don't have the attention span to do things, in my experience. And when they have to do something (the same thing) over and over again...they really hate that.
I feel that at the younger ages you can do so much more to keep things "entertaining" with your lessons. You can set up your classroom around a theme, etc. HS is such a different ballgame.
Ditto these things. How can 1 person who is trying to teach something (whatever it may be) to 35 kids at a time possibly compete with video games, constant music (iPods) and all the other constant entertainment and stimulation? IMHO we're doing them a serious disservice by trying to hard to keep them entertained. Their future boss isn't going to care if the task is boring.
(I'm talking about HS here, obviously I don't look at elementary age kiddos this way.)