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This is our fault as educators as well.
For years, instead of fighting against it, I’ve seen teachers try to gamify everything in their classroom and make it quick and fast paced to accommodate. Gimkits, kahoot, bell ringers, and more. Teachers trying to fill the class with 5 8 minute agenda items. Rather than stand firm and actually demand attention for 50, disciplines are relaxed and they are fed entertainment value more than ever before.
We condense novels. Read only chapters of some, give the reader’s digest versions of other’s all because we say they can’t focus on reading for so long. They can. Make them.
As a 10 year old boy who only wanted to play sports, I was wired to always be active as well, but my teachers expected me to sit down and commit to work for 20-30-40-50 minutes on one thing. I didn’t want to read that novel for 45 minutes. I may squirm. I may have been bored, but I could sit there and quietly read.
We bought in to lower attention spans and are just helping the problem grow.
Another issue that I see besides the addiction to the phones or tablets is the addiction to sugar. I'm in a place where it is like "You showed up, here's a dum dum." "You didn't hit anybody today, here's a Skittle." The students have learned to associate mediocrity with reward, and to not value good behavior for its own merit. So if you personally don't show up with a bag of M&Ms, and I don't, good luck with their attention span in that way as well. Bribing students backfires full throttle.
It's frustrating, but I don't blame the kids. The world they're growing up in is so different. There's no easy fix, I'm afraid.
You're right, of course, but my attention span is not so great these days either…
Everything today is so constant and fast paced. Causes a lot of stress for kids and adults. Attention spans across everyone is definitely not at its best. It is a constant battle to stay on task. I have been trying to use the pomodoro technique, set a timer for focus on then break time. Takes a while of using it, but seems to be helping somewhat.
My school is getting those lock bags for cell phones next year. Hopefully things will change.