“Wait, what are we doing?” a student mumbles during class after looking up from their laptop. Their frustrated teacher sighs as they just explained the assignment for the class period a second time.
“I’m not repeating myself again,” the teacher says, tired and frustrated from having this happen every class. The student and teacher will now bicker back and forth about who’s right.
Here’s the problem: Some students aren’t respectful enough to pay their teachers attention during class.
“I’ve been a teacher in Region 14 for seven years,” says science teacher Joshua Kornblut, “and every year, it seems like it gets more difficult to get kids to sit still and pay attention.”
Many teachers agree that getting kids to pay attention isn’t an easy task; even more can agree that electronics play an even bigger role.
“I think the screens and the apps that students are on give them shorter attention spans,” Kornblut adds. “So that definitely is a part of getting kids to sit still.”
I’ll admit, trying to listen to my teacher talking about something I don’t have 100% interest in is hard as is. Then when you add on the fact that the group chat is blowing up, I still have to turn in that assignment for my other class, I have access to play games or watch whatever I want and it‘s almost time for lunch so I’m watching the clock, it can be hard to fully comprehend what was just explained with all the distractions flying around me.
“Sometimes it’s harder than other times, but overall, it’s always a battle,” says English teacher Benjamin Guerette. “I noticed that a lot of people wanna play games or they have to have their Chromebook open, even if they’re still listening to what’s going on in class, they feel like they have to multitask for some reason.”
When the electronics aren’t the distraction, some kids lack the respect to stop talking and paying attention.
“It’s a constant battle,” science teacher Toby Denman said. “Sometimes, people come in fired up because something happened and sometimes you gotta let them fizzle that out. Then other times it’s just a matter of grabbing people’s attention. I try not to yell and call people out on things. I’ll usually find myself in a situation where the class is having a difficult time settling down so I’ll make some sort of funny noise or do something to just have them be like, ‘What is he even doing?’”
Holding focus isn’t just a problem in the classroom – it’s universal.
“I‘ll be watching my TV trying to get the weather or the news,” says Denman, “but then I find myself distracted by my phone just because it’s sitting next to me and it’s there. It’s a social issue, not just an issue in the classroom.”
Teachers attend at least four years of college, then put their money, time, effort, and an immense amount of patience into the work they do, all for students to pay them no attention and show more respect to a screen than a human being standing in front of them trying to improve their education.
We students need to turn off the notifications, shut the laptop, and pay attention, because at the end of the day, our grades and focus are always going to be more important than whatever drama is going on in those texts and whatever new high score we’re getting on that game we’re not supposed to be playing.
