Knowing What Students Like, and Why They Don't Like Anything

I have regularly heard the notion that the average student does not like or care for school. The fact that they would often rather be doing something else is not uncommon and had always puzzled me growing up. Throughout grade school, I almost always enjoyed my time in class, learning, and doing work. Certain classes and teachers got under my skin but for the most part, I enjoyed learning, and doing, new things.

This epidemic of students not being engaged in their classes can typically be traced to one simple thing, they would rather be doing, or learning, something else. K. Ann Renniger details how individual interest develops and deepens over time. This can rather simply explain that the older a student gets, the more variety and complexity their interests attain. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near that simple. For myself, I found that as I got older my interests definitely deepened but they also grew much more narrow. By the end of high school, I almost exclusively only cared about, and tried harder, in classes that actually interested me. The same is often true of many students. One who loves arts but does not care about math will disengage with numeracy with ease while becoming giddy over drama or painting. As teachers, it is crucial to spot these trends to avoid active disengagement even if, objectively, you are doing a great job. Student interests can serve as a starting point for curiosity and motivation and juggling them all is incredibly daunting.

I recently watched the film Bad Apples starring Saoirse Ronan which premiered at festivals last year and had a wide release this year. It revolves around Ronan, who plays a teacher with the absolute worst student imaginable, Danny, who disappears one day. Without giving spoilers, as the film is fantastic and I highly recommend it, her class begins to gel together and perform phenomenally in their academics in the absence of Danny. She notes how she never knew that a particular student was so proficient in math or that another has an incredible passion for art. None of these revelations or increase in quality would have happened if the troublesome student was still in the class. While obviously a fictitious, and a bit of an extreme take on this idea, the notion of how important and hard to identify student interests are rings true. Many students will often feel shy or intimidated for one reason or another and never let those interests be known. By being able to identify what your students care about and finding ways to weave that into your classroom is a cheat code for building student engagement. Unless you have a Danny. In that case, good luck and try your best.

ChaseD@OTU