This is so boring
"This is so boring." How many times have we heard that from students in our classrooms? Frequently, the utterance of these words is the precursor to a discipline problem.
What do you think? A middle school assistant principal friend suggested this: "the more bored the student, the worse his/her behavior." He went on to explain that he seemed to have the most discipline referrals from those teachers he described as "less than exciting."
It didn't take us long to find that many other educators seemed to agree. Emma McDonald writes in her "New Teacher Advisor Column" that "Student misbehavior isn't always about bad attitudes and "keeping reps" (reputation). Many times student misbehavior in the classroom happens because of boredom."
She goes on to say "When students are bored in class, their minds begin to wander and they start thinking, "I wonder what would happen if I..." Then the little disruptions begin. The little disruptions pile up and turn into large disruptions. That scenario can go on and on until everything is out of control."
Makes sense.
When we looked into "boredom" we discovered something called a "Boredom Proneness Scale" that attempts to empirically measure a person's degree or state of boredom. This scale was developed by Farmer and Sundberg, and published in the Journal of Personality Assessment in 1986. The University of West Florida has a nice copy of it at their website.
In The Journal of Psychology (1999) Watt and Vodanovich presented some interesting findings in their article "Boredom proneness and psychosocial development." The bottom line: Students who have a low boredom-prone score (not easily bored) had significantly better peer relationships and were more "educationally involved" than those with higher scores.
There are many other studies showing the problems associated with those students who are easily bored: they are depressed and have high anxiety (Farmer & Sundberg, 1986), they are impulsive (Watt & Vodanovich, 1992) and they are procrastinators (Blunt and Pychyl. 1998).
Educators are not (professional) psychiatrists or psychologists, but we certainly know that the traits described above are not what we are looking for in our perfect classroom. What to do?
In most cases, with thirty or so students in class, we will have "boredom proneness" scores ranging from the very high to the very low. To maintain a high-interest level and a low-boredom level (and therefore, a better behavior level) we need to keep all of those students engaged.
Paula Moore, teacher of the year in 2005 for Washington County (MD) and a 2006 USA Today All American Teacher, addresses student boredom: "Brain research indicates that the average attention span of teenagers is limited to five or ten minutes. As a result, I rapidly change activities and groupings so that students will be engaged and involved, preventing boredom and discipline problems." Simple. But sometimes we forget. Ask the best teachers in the building how they keep their students from being bored and the chances are excellent that they'll answer with "The key to preventing boredom is preparation."
We recognize that boredom often leads students to discipline problems as well as truancy problems. The Advantage Press is developing a set of "Truancy Packets" to help boredom-prone students. Our goal is to have the new packets out of testing and into the schools this spring. Watch our website for more information.
If your students become bored and act out in class, why place them in a detention room where they will become even more bored, and perhaps act out again? Give them something to do that will not only keep them active, but will help them set goals to prevent future misbehavior. The Advantage Press, Inc. publishes a number of behavior packets ready to use "right out of the box." No learning curve, no working at understanding basic theoretical concepts -- students simply read material that can help teachers successfully manage student behavior. You are welcome to try our free samples.