Last weekend, as we all prepared to be launched back into our routines after winter break, I caught both kids laying on couches — one upside down with her feet in the air and head on the cushion, the other maximally-stretched from arm to arm — faces glued to devices. It was noon. Neither had eaten anything of substance. Water glasses are nowhere to be found. I asked, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” said the oldest.
“I’m bored,” said the youngest.
When I hear those two words, “I’m bored,” my eyes instinctively roll and I audibly exhale…every time. In my mind, I rattled off no fewer than 14 things they could do that didn’t involve a screen and nine of those things weren’t even chores. Bored? Impossible.
The truth is, passive stimulation from those screens is often easier than kickstarting a new activity. Sometimes, you’d rather lay with your feet in the air than disrupt the boredom.
Boredom feels pervasive lately and your classrooms are no exception.
I know what I may have just implied, and I want to offer a quick disclaimer: You are not boring. In fact, I see you standing in front of your class every day looking for ways to make the curriculum exciting and relevant for your students. And…
Research and experience tell us, despite our best efforts, students experience boredom at school — even in classrooms like yours. In one study, 49% of students reported daily boredom, with nearly 20% reporting they were bored in every class.1 Another study found boredom is contagious.2 They found the person seated between two bored people “self-reported lower attentiveness, took fewer pages of lecture notes, and performed worse on a lecture quiz by about 8% points.” Boredom is a natural feeling and it also comes with negative impacts on academic performance and a student’s motivation to learn.
What causes boredom?
Researchers asked 111 9th grade students to recall a time when they were bored in class and what led to that feeling. They also asked those students’ teachers to think of a time when they noticed students seemed bored and what may have contributed to that boredom. Both groups’ responses were surprisingly similar to one another3:
- Monotony: Lessons followed the same pattern, the same routine: Long lectures followed by writing assignments or discussions.
- Lack of meaning: The content was irrelevant or uninteresting. Students didn’t see why they needed to learn it.
- Being overchallenged: When students couldn’t figure out a challenging concept, sometimes they just stopped participating.
- Being underchallenged: Students who understood a concept checked out as their teacher continued to elaborate.
- Lack of involvement: Students wanted to be more involved in the lesson and often weren’t.
When I imagine the recent times I’ve been bored at a conference or during professional development, I can recall feeling the monotony, the irrelevance, the lack of involvement, being out of my depth, or wishing I could be pushed a little further.
In one study, 49% of students reported daily boredom, with nearly 20% reporting they were bored in every class.1
This, to me, is the true challenge you’re up against in your classroom. At any given time, you could have students disengaging for any of these reasons all at the same time. It’s like spinning eight different plates and then someone throws you a bowling ball.
There isn’t going to be one solution to this problem. There are several evidence-based strategies to help you decrease boredom and increase student engagement. Here are four to get you started.
1. Communicate Respect and Expectations
Engaging students’ attention starts with you, standing in front of everyone. So, communicate your position in the classroom clearly.
Recently I learned a new term for a specific teaching style: warm demander. A warm demander is someone who “expects a great deal of their students, convinces them of their own brilliance, and helps them to reach their potential in a disciplined and structured environment.”4 Their classrooms hold students to high standards because they believe in their students’ ability to succeed. Warm demanders achieve this by: 5
2. Add a Little Humor
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: The research we share in these articles can be dry. I know, it’s shocking! While my writing invites you in and holds your attention, I also know it helps to break things up. Enter GIFs. A well-placed GIF adds meaning to the content, gives your brain a place to rest, and adds some life to the page. They’re funny, too. You can do the same thing in your classrooms.
For humor to amplify your content, you need it to demonstrate the concepts in a surprising or unexpected way. For example, when it’s time to summarize a lesson, try incorporating student slang. It’s funny to hear adults trying to be hip. At quiz time, students might even remember you talking about “rizz,” or “cap,” or how something was “low key sus,” and they’ll recall the answers more quickly.
3. Foster Curiosity
Curiosity can lead to a bunch of positive outcomes like increased school engagement, self-efficacy, creative thinking, increased attention, academic achievement, and deeper learning.6 Asking questions is a hallmark of a curious learner. Unfortunately, research shows the older kids get, the fewer questions they ask.7 One way to foster curiosity in your classroom is to teach students the nuts and bolts of asking thought-provoking questions that matter to them. One strategy is called the Question Formulation Technique, and it looks like this:
- Present the class with a prompt or a general theme you know you’ll explore in upcoming lessons.
- Students produce questions related to that prompt. They jot down as many questions as they can, without judgement. The only rule is the question must be posed as a question, not a statement.
- Students then go back and change any closed-ended questions into open-ended ones. Expand all those yes-no questions to allow for more answers.
- Students then pick three open-ended questions to pursue as you continue through the lessons.
- Finally, students develop a plan for incorporating those questions into their learning as the unit progresses.
In classrooms implementing this technique, students reported they felt more curious about their learning. They also shared that the more they did it, the more they grew in their curiosity overall.8
4. Involve Students in Solutions
What better way to engage students than to include them in developing solutions? The easiest way to include students is to ask them what’s working and what could work better. Surveys give you the data you need to create opportunities for students to be heard. The School Climate Survey (SCS) includes student-specific surveys to understand student perspectives on how your school works for them. Focus groups allow students to share their experiences directly and collaborate with you to solve problems. Not sure what questions to ask in those focus groups? Check out the data you collected in the SCS and get curious about the lower-scoring aspects of your school climate.
Student involvement doesn’t have to end there. Other ideas include student-led conferences, classroom cogens, advisory committees, or membership on schoolwide teams. There are no limits for including students in their own educational experience.
When boredom strikes, our brains look for something more engaging to do. In your classroom, the goal is to offer more engaging options than students could otherwise find in their phones. Boredom-busting strategies start with you and the presence you have in your classroom. Build trusting relationships, teach expectations, hold your students accountable, and look for ways to offer support when they need it. Add some humor to your lessons to break up the monotony. Teach students how to be curious about topics that seem uninteresting. Then, when things still aren’t working, ask your students to help you generate more engaging solutions.
1 Yazzie-Mintz, E. (2010). Charting the path from engagement to achievement: A report on the 2009 High School Survey of Student Engagement. Bloomington, IN: Center for Evaluation & Education Policy.
2 Forrin, N. D., Kudsi, N., Cyr, E. N., Sana, F., Davidesco, I., & Kim, J. A. (2024). Investigating attention contagion between students in a lecture hall. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/stl0000419
3 Daschmann, E. C., Goetz, T., & Stupnisky, R. H. (2011). Testing the predictors of boredom at school: Development and validation of the precursors to boredom scales. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(3), 421–440. https://doi.org/10.1348/000709910X526038
4 Alexander, M. (2016, April 13). The warm demander: An equity approach. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/warm-demander-equity-approach-matt-alexander
5 Bondy, E., & Ross, D. D. (2008). The teacher as warm demander. Educational Leadership, 66(1), 54-58.
6Clark, S., Harbaugh, A. G., & Seider, S. (2019). Fostering adolescent curiosity through a question brainstorming intervention. Journal of adolescence, 75, 98-112.
7 Clark, S., Harbaugh, A. G., & Seider, S. (2019). Fostering adolescent curiosity through a question brainstorming intervention. Journal of adolescence, 75, 98-112.
8 Clark, S., Harbaugh, A. G., & Seider, S. (2019). Fostering adolescent curiosity through a question brainstorming intervention. Journal of adolescence, 75, 98-112.