Dealing with Apathy

  Nothing is more of a punch in the stomach for a teacher or a tutor than an apathetic student. You would think that in a large classroom a teacher does not notice or the tutor would not care as long as they continued to show up and pay. For many of us in the education field, it hurts to think that someone can not care about what we love. The gift of learning.

  Here are some suggestions for getting your student out of a rut; whether you are a parent, teacher, or even the student!

§  Connect with each other. Someone has to open the dialogue. If you are the parent or teacher, let them know how much you appreciate them and that you are there if they need to talk. That’s it, don’t push. They will open up when they are ready. For the student, if someone is trying to talk to you listen up! Ask to talk in a private setting. Even if you can’t solve the problem, sometimes it just helps to voice your anxiety, doubts, and fears.

§  Change up your routine. Sometimes we all get our ourselves “stuck” simply because we do the same things over and over and over and over… you get the point! Parents may want to have a family fun night to change things up a bit. Our family had Bowling Night a little while back. I am thinking we need to go play mini-golf next. Teachers should change things up, especially on Fridays when the kids are not going to want to concentrate on school. There are lots of fun learning activities that can be used in place of the average lesson. In a high school Physics class before vacation, we had “Debate Day” where I asked pointed questions that involved the topic of Thermodynamics and how it applied to Global Warming, or not.

§  Hang out with someone new. This is where teachers are extremely important. In the real world, we all have to work with people we don’t know and some we may not like much. Cooperative learning techniques should be used to liven up the atmosphere.

§  Have the students create journals. Usually there is more than one apathetic student and journals are very successful way of tying the material together. This can include a “self-assessment” of how they feel about what they learned, or did not, and how they feel in general. You can phrase the question: “On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being poor and 5 being excellent, how is your day going?” If it is consistently on the down side, then you may be able to intervene and help the student.

It is becoming more and more difficult for teachers to get to every student in this fashion because of standardized testing demands. But, I will save my testing rant for another day!