Des called me from school today because he was having "a bad day." His friends weren't there and he was a bit at odds. "Nothing here is fun."
"Hitting the wall" is a phrase that is used when a kid is bored or is struggling to find out what it is that interests them. Staff members can probably recognize the condition faster than I can but take a hands off approach as a student works through it. This is another aspect of the school where the value of the process is not readily discernible or easily explained.
When our kids seem unhappy our first instinct is to help them. It's natural but at times wrongheaded. Boredom is a challenge not a problem. We all need to struggle to find our way because when we struggle with boredom or dissatisfaction we are also thinking about what is important to us, what we want, what we need to do to change the situation. If a kid complains about being bored a staff member might make a suggestion but they are not going to direct the student. It is a subtle but important distinction. Saying "have you been to the art room today?" is different from plopping them down with paper, supplies and a model for a project to complete. The first is a suggestion, a bit of advice, the second is a distraction from the real problem. Yes, the child now has something to do but it hasn't addressed the real problem of figuring out what it was they wanted to do in the first place.
2 comments:
agree (1)
here's an article from the woman who wrote "a year without made in china" about boredom. good stuff.
http://tiny.cc/ewqnT
As a teacherpreneur I operated a consensus-run small group for about five years. It was the closest to a Sudbury-style education I could offer. So I understand the difficulty of explaining this kind of education.
Consider this approach. The kids have three jobs in a democratic school:
1)solve problems
2)pursue goals
3)have fun
Where problems are circumstances that lead to non-optimal states of mind. Goals are personal experiments in accessing optimal states of mind. And having fun is the collective default method of helping each other have access to optimal states of mind.
So, boredom is a non-optimal state of mind. Thus, for your son it is a problem. It is not your problem, nor the problem of a staff person, therefore it is neither yours nor the staff person's responsibility to address it. It is fundamental to his education to discover how to deal with boredom. The same argument can be made for other non-optimal states such as anger, confusion, depression or jealousy.
The point of education is to produce a person who can perceive accurately, think clearly and act effectively on self-selected goals and aspirations. When we are in non-optimal states of mind our ability to do all of those things deteriorates. When we are able to achieve and maintain optimal states of mind, then we have an ever increasing capacity to do those things under more diverse circumstances. The truly educated person is one who is able to access optimal states of mind completely independent of their circumstances. They are able to function despite every kind of hardship, difficulty, or change in their fortune for better or worse.
I hope that might be helpful. If you are interested in finding out more try these pages on my site:
In Elementary School, What's Elementary?
Optimal states of mind is more elementary in elementary school than literacy.
or
Debunking The Myth That School is a Classroom
A school is any context designed for learning but the persistent myth that it must include a classroom does everyone a disservice.
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Enjoy,
Don Berg
Site: http://www.teach-kids-attitude-1st.com
Blog: blog.Attitutor.com
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