Bored!

A common refrain but why and what can we do about it?!

“I’m bored”.

“This is boring”.

“‘Cause I was bored”.

I am a teacher and this phrase, or something akin to it, pops up from time to time. It always gives me pause. Is it really boring? Who’s responsible for things being boring? And is boring a matter of opinion?

Photo by Ludmila Pashkevych on Unsplash

Are you really bored or is this the easy option?

Have you ever found yourself staring into the open fridge wondering why you don’t want to eat anything in there at all, but you feel like eating something even though you can’t honestly say you feel hungry? It feels frustrating but that is better than the empty feeling of boredom eh? I know for me I will often eat to give me something to do… I say that I feel bored but actually there are dozens of things I could do if I wanted to. It’s just easier to say I am bored rather than acknowledge the feeling of dissatisfaction with a task I need to do, or knowing that I have something to do but it is hard or has come to a sticky spot and I’m looking for an out from this frustration, or feeling overwhelmed at not knowing where to start. I’m looking for a distraction and avoidance of discomfort but facing that is hard, it’s easier to say I’m bored.

I think our students do this too.

There’s a level of discomfort but perhaps they don’t have the language to communicate this. The work they are doing might be too hard, too easy, too much choice or too restrictive. They might struggle with knowing how to get started. They might struggle with maintaining motivation to finish things off well (I totally get this!). Bored is a quick and easy way to describe this discomfort but in this case it is inaccurate.

Many things become boring when we lack purpose.

Purpose is powerful, having a why is wonderful.

I love to crochet, I am not very good at it but enjoy doing it. However I don’t crochet regularly. Without a specific project I simply don’t feel motivated, but once I have a project that I am committed to then there is no stopping me. A project gives me a sense of purpose and that keeps me going… even when it gets tough and I stop enjoying it for a bit. This is the power of knowing the why behind what we do!

In our schools there are many things that our students have to do that may not in and of themselves be particularly motivating or enjoyable. Developing skills takes effort, time and energy… that often doesn’t feel good. Without a why a lot of these tasks feel pointless, endless, and ultimately boring. When we know the why it doesn’t stop the skill development process from being laborious, taxing or hard, but it does give us a sense of purpose. Something to work towards can help hugely.

Boring is an opinion.

Boring is as boring does. I don’t know who originally said this, I have a vague memory that it might be in Forrest Gump but I am not sure. Wherever it comes from, I think it holds some truth.

My first paid employment was a holiday job cleaning tulip bulbs, you read that right, cleaning tulip bulbs. There were six of us standing along a conveyer belt cleaning off the ends of tulip bulbs. Every hour or so we would change positions a bit. There were piles of boxes of bulbs coming in from the paddocks and for a few weeks it would feel like we were barely making a dint in the piles. It could have been truly horrid and boring, for some people it was and they didn’t stay, I returned for several seasons. We just found ways to make it less boring; setting up little targets to work towards, chatting to the person beside you, occasionally leaving a rotten bulb in the mix to see who would get it and giggling (knowing that sometimes it was going to happen to me too!), hearing stories from a grandmother who supervised us. And knowing that the pay would help me afford Christmas gifts and go towards uni fees helped too.

Not all students find the same tasks boring. Not all students who find tasks boring struggle to do the tasks. Some of them naturally find ways to get on with the job. Some might need support. There are many ways students can find to make a task less boring… we just need to help them find ways that don’t distract themselves or others from doing what is needed!

Boredom can be a great thing.

Boredom does get a bad rap but it can also be the seat of creativity. For a short time we lived on a farm when I was growing up. This is back in the days of limited choice with TV where it didn’t dominate the room, no internet and no computer in our house, and the only phone was on a party line! I was far away from my friends and weekends felt interminably long… but this is where the magic happened. I would go for walks in the bush behind the house and scope out tracks and great places for huts that my friends and I could build when they were able to visit, I would act out songs, stories and speeches to an audience of bemused sheep, I would play games with my little sister, and I would read a variety of books and write stories.

Our kids live in a world where there is less real and genuine boredom. Flashing screens offer something to do every time we feel uncomfortable, when we don’t know what to do, when we have nothing to do. It makes us feel busy, like we are doing something. Too many of our students are used to this overstimulation and therefore effortful tasks without the speed of a screen feel ‘boring’. Unconscious consuming is not an antidote to boredom, it is the crushing of creativity. Feeling bored can be a doorway to discovery and creativity.

Breaking up with the lie that learning should be fun.

As a young teacher I used to try to make learning ‘fun’, I now try to make learning engaging- there is a difference. I start the year by promising my students that sometimes they’ll find things fun, interesting and exciting at school but they’ll also find things hard, frustrating, annoying, even boring. This is not because I want people to have a bad time, but learning takes effort, energy and time and I feel it is important that we are honest about this. We need to normalise the learning process and all the emotions that come with it… and then we need to be ready to support our learners through the journey so they don’t give up at the first sign of discomfort (or the second or the third!). We want them to experience the joy that comes from achievement, but rarely does this happen instantly.

What can we do?

For the Teachers Matter Bookclub we are currently reading Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn, in chapter 5 he mentions boredom and the impact that boredom can have on motivation. This is important for us as educators to acknowledge and there are things we can do.

1. Talk to your students about how they are feeling and identify what lies beneath ‘I’m bored’ as more often than not there is something else underneath.

2. Work out what is actually important for our students to do and then explain why it is important- helping them to identify places that these skills are relevant is even more empowering.

3. Teach the students about the learning process (The Learning Pit is a great metaphor), about metacognition, and about ways that they can regulate their emotions (remember modelling all of this is powerful).

4. Look at how you can engage learners- consider their interests and strengths, use humour, vary resources you use, offer choice. Get excited about what you are teaching- enthusiasm can be infectious.

5. Accept that some people will find some things boring and that your job is to help them connect with the learning process.

6. The antidote to apathy is action. Some students struggle with getting started on a task, it might be re-engaging with a task they need to finish or a new task altogether. We can help them with breaking the task down into specific steps, we can give them a framework to use to begin, we can work alongside them as they kick off.

This is not an exhaustive list of course. What else would you add?

We all feel bored from time to time. It’s normal. We need to help our students understand their emotions and learn to manage discomfort so they can thrive as life long learners - and one of these emotions is boredom.

What do you think?