Opting In and Opting Out - Part 1 - What Makes Kids Interested?

This morning we watched a movie during junior high math class.  We are studying geometry.  The students have also taken a resurgent interest in origami lately since Mike Barry, who usually teaches the little kids and is an origami enthusiast, has been subbing for Bhawin.  The movie we watched is called Between the Folds, and it explores different origami styles and methods by examining the work of some of the foremost paper folders.  It also touches on the connections between origami and math, science, engineering, and other forms of art.  It is one of those slow but mind-expanding documentaries.

J was bored throughout.  He was unfocused, restless.  He got up several times, leaving the room and coming back, sitting on the floor, playing with his phone. He asked to leave. J doesn't need my permission to leave, no consequence will befall him if he leaves - and yet, I didn't want to endorse him leaving.  I was somehow not comfortable giving him permission. Maybe he sensed my agenda and that turned him off further, I don't know.

Later it was time for our virtual trip to South Africa.  Virtual trips happen once a month - we all get together, pretend to fly to a country (we watch youtube clips of airplanes touching down at each particular airport), watch videos and presentations, and then eat the food of that country for lunch.  I always enjoy it, especially the lunch.  But again, J complained.  He didn't want to go. 

J is certainly not the only student who resists certain activities. He is a relatively mild-mannered kid - if he doesn't want to do something, he protests a bit but it is hardly a big deal. But still I noticed that in these situations it was hard to get him interested.  

Since coming to the Free School I have been thinking a lot about opting out - that is, what happens when kids chose not to do things.  Especially things that other schools would make them do, with the belief that those learning experiences are necessary.  I have a lot of questions, like, what happens if a kid always opts out of learning something that is important for them to know?  Are we doing our job in educating them?  Why do kids opt in or out of a particular activity?  How can we create conditions that encourage kids to opt in to learning and get the most out of school, without coercing them?

First and foremost, kids opt out of things that are not interesting to them - "this is boring!" is a common refrain.  But in interacting with J today, I realized that it is often not necessarily the activity itself that determines whether a kid is interested.  That is, we can't just think about creating "interesting" activities.  We have to ask, how to we foster kids to be "interested" in general.

The quality of being interested varies a lot by kid, not just with respect to which activities they like and dislike, but in general.  Some students at our school find a million things to engage in.  Some find only a few, but engage very passionately.  But some kids seem a bit adrift - they are frequently bored and it is hard to get them interested in anything. And I wonder, is this okay? Should we just let it unfold? Should we let the students come to their learning completely on their own terms? Or should we try to create conditions that foster engagement?

So where does interested-ness come from?  In adolescents I notice that in some cases kids who have had difficult experiences outside of school have trouble engaging in school. It might be connected to the hierarchy of needs - it's hard to focus when basic physical or emotional needs are unmet.  It might also be connected to experiences of stress and trauma, since those can lead to "hypervigilance" and an inability to focus on anything in particular.

Still, some kids who are not immediately interested can be provoked if you engage with them one-on-one, talking to them about the topic at hand.  Others become interested if they see peers engaged.  Others respond to hands-on presentations or humor.  As teachers, we think a lot about how to make the material engaging.  But I also want to think in the longer term, about how to support kids so that they will engage spontaneously, without so much song and dance from their teachers.  I want them to be able take on their own learning projects on topics that they care about.

At the Free School, one way we foster interested-ness is simply by letting kids run with their passions without too many interruptions.  Kids get to experience what it feels like to be deeply engaged for a long period of time, and they discover that a particular topic often has surprises lurking beneath the surface.  However, we haven't succeeded in getting all of our kids to really feel this thrill or seek it out.

I would welcome comments from others about what you have notice about kids who seem interested versus those that don't.

January

Students learn about mental disabilities during community class.

Student learn experience visual impairment during community class.

Students attempt to read lips to simulate the experience of hearing impairment.

It has hovered between zero and twenty degrees all week.  The playground is deserted and field trips are few.  So, how do Free School students pass the time in the depths of winter?

If you are four, your main obsession currently is play-dough.  We made a basket of dough fruits and Lilibeth, who is our substitute teacher while Bhawin is away, led us in reciting the names of the fruits in English and Spanish.  The four-year-olds are also enjoying many dance parties (limbo, freeze dance, cha cha slide) and demanding a lot of piggy-back rides.

If you are five, you spend a good deal of time with Legos, letters, dragon stories, and ooblek. Mariana enojoyed sitting in my lap dancing to Whiteney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," and everyone loves playing number bingo and counting model animals.

If you are nine, you spend some of your time arguing about math word problems.  Which cell-phone plan should the hypothetical Tim get?  The pay-as-you-go plan is a better deal but the unlimited plan is better because, well, it's unlimited. There are also English workbooks, snowball fights, scrabble, and learning to crochet.  Oh, and a whole day when everyone drew on a fake mustache.

If you are 13, a good hobby is downloading an iPhone app the inserts ghost images into pictures and using it to scare the crap out of little kids.  There are also handstand competitions, Adele songs on the piano, lending your gym shoes to younger boys who forgot theirs, and folding origami dragons.  Not to mention having a contest to see who can draw the best right angle and trash-talking during an angles relay race.

Everyone loves trips to the gym, pancakes for lunch, and making a giant mess.  Everyone loves to argue and get on other people's nerves - three council meetings in the last week and another in the offing for sure.  No one reads all that much on their own, to my eternal frustration, though they all seem to enjoy reading stories as a class.  A number of kids are thinking about applying to other private schools next year, and aside from the obvious issue that those other schools are very expensive, I wonder if they know what life is like in January at other schools.  

Here are some things we are not doing: test prep drills.  Detention.  Uniform checks.  Walking in lines.  Sitting quietly.