Eliminate Student Apathy

Would you agree that student apathy toward school is a common problem and one of the toughest for teachers to overcome?

When kids don't care about their education, teachers struggle to educate them.

Think about it: if you didn't like pizza, what would someone have to do to get you to eat it?

They would have to work more creatively and with more effort to make that pizza enticing to you. But if someone else who loves pizza came along, the 'seller' would need do little more than make a great pizza and the pizza lover would buy.

In the classroom—whether physical or digital—teachers are presented with groups of kids that include those who already value their education and are willing and eager to participate, as well as kids who do not value their education and need to be enticed into participation.

Of course there are many different kinds of kids in that same group, including those who value education but struggle to participate effectively, and those who don't really care but are good at 'playing the game' and who get their work done on time, even if it isn't their best quality.

Students who are apathetic about education present a unique challenge to teachers, because there is no playbook for meeting their needs. In the past we've needed to figure these kids out on a case-by-case basis.

I've learned something over my fifteen years in education, though: educational apathy is most often the result of a failed connection between education and personal desire.

Over the course of twelve years of classroom instruction, I applied three specific strategies that resulted in my most apathetic students transforming into self-directed learners.

Every child deserves the opportunities that a quality education can provide, and every teacher works hard to ensure their students benefit from those opportunities. But hard work alone isn't enough to make all the difference for apathetic kids.

I've put together a short e-book on eliminating student apathy. The book's straight-forward, simple design allows readers to get right to the content they want without any distractions. It also includes embedded audio files that let you hear tone, framing, and examples of teacher-student interactions.

Teachers interested in buying the ebook can find it in my TpT store.