Fidgetiness in an Online World
We’ve all encountered them, students who won’t — nay, can’t — sit still.
I was that kid at school when there wasn’t a name for it, a diagnosis for it, or a treatment for it. Even so, my condition didn’t go unnoticed. I recall the last night of our Year 6 school camp was a talent quest, and the teachers kicked off the fun by imitating various students. The visual description for me was acted by one of the teachers, who was walking around a desk in the middle of the class with with his pencil constantly remaining on the desk writing on a sheet of paper. Whilst I was happily laughing at this representation of me, I also became aware of my fidgetiness for the first time.
40-years later and I have added to my own hyperactivity with an overactive wife and two (out of three) distractible kids, one of which is also an overactive 8-year-old boy. So, when the school they go to was shut down two weeks ago due to a staff member testing positive to the Coronavirus, it was going to be very interesting to see how they survived the new online world order. Needless to say, it hasn’t gone well — especially for the boy.
This is where I have to fall on my sword and admit that as a father, a working from home employee and a stay-at-home educator, I have been derelict in my duties. My kids do not get up in the morning and put on their school uniforms complete with their bags on their back, then walk around the house for ten minutes to simulate their walk to school, then take their coats off and hang up their bags, only to finally sit down at their desks in the area if the house specially designated for school and log into their remote class with the right mindset and attitude fit for a day of learning. No. Instead they roll out of bed (and sometimes not even that), throw on a sweater over their pyjamas (and in the case of my son, never even that) and log on wherever they can. This lack preparation makes it almost impossible for them to focus.
The lack of focus is exacerbated by the fact that my kids attend single sex schools, which means having 20, 8-year-old boys online at the same time can get disruptive, even for those who can concentrate for longer than 35 one-hundredths of a second. So-much-so that the teacher asked that if there is a parent around and available could they please sit with their son to make sure they weren’t unmuting themselves or muting the teacher or ejecting other boys from the lesson or any of the other countless things they could do to cause trouble via Microsoft Teams. Disclaimer, my son is restless but he’s not naughty. Nevertheless, just to be sure, I sat in on one lesson with him yesterday. Furthermore, while the boys were allowed to get online a few minutes early to say hi to their friends, due their disruptive tendencies the teacher’s expectation was that once the lesson started the students would have their cameras and microphones switched off.
Once the lesson started I was quickly reassured that he wasn’t one of the naughty boys playing with the online classroom controls because he was rarely close enough to the computer to enact such mischievous behaviour. In fact I was so alarmed at his progression through the lesson, I couldn’t help but photograph him.
Within the first few minutes of logging on (still in his pyjamas, long after lunchtime) he was already losing interest and threatening to pull out the cable to disconnect his computer…
…soon after the ants started crawling in his pants and sitting ‘normally’ on his chair became too much of a challenge…
…from his haunches and the squat position standing was easy…
…the standing turned into balancing…
…and the balancing into an artful escape…
…and with his camera and microphone switched off (as per the teacher’s instructions), it wasn’t long before he made a run for it!
The trouble with him (and I assume the same is the case with his 14-year-old sister in the room next door — although her escape is to an online world of Snapchat, Insta, Tik Tok and whatever else young people are on these days) is that the online world or the non-classroom environment invites too many distractions — making it hard for many to adequately engage with the lesson.
There was one point in the lesson where he was engaged and happily working — it was when the teacher asked them to fill in the worksheet she had emailed through earlier in the day…
This revelation — that my son will do something, when there’s something to do — got me thinking about how to make things more active and engaging for him, but before I get into that I have to acknowledge the outstanding work teachers do. Until I was forced to spend a fortnight at home I had no idea how difficult it was to teach my kids anything especially something as complex as English, Maths or Art. And now that I’ve tried being a teacher, I can see that teaching my kids to take their plate from the table and putting in the dishwasher or sink seem like an impossible lesson to learn — no matter how often they’re taught it.
In addition, after witnessing the lesson my son participated in first hand, and seeing the challenges he had with sitting still and listening to a relatively static lesson, I wondered — for students like these what are the alternatives? Especially because by the end lesson he was literally standing on his head.
I have long been an advocate of project based learning and so I thought the best way to engage these active students is by getting them engrossed in a real world problem — one that they are excited to participate in. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and design an activity that, at the very least, would last some weeks. That project was to design, build and grow an above ground veggie garden.
It all sounded great in my head but no doubt incorporating the learning opportunities in the doing was probably going to be harder than I thought. Maths maybe, science definitely, English not sure… nevertheless, I figured now was the opportunity to give it a shot!
I’ll keep you posted as to our progress in the coming days and weeks. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it…
