This has been a very busy week indeed. Besides homework (hard to believe I have so much at my age; I wonder sometimes what I was thinking going back to school), my roommate injured his knee slipping on the snow last weekend, and has been unable to walk. His knee is slowly getting better, but it has meant more work for me playing nursemaid to him all week. I also found out on Tuesday that my daughter, who thought she had only sprained her ankle, actually broke it. She had surgery to insert a screw and some metal plates today, so I spent the better part of this afternoon worrying about her. And, it snowed again, which in my case means shoveling, since I do not own a snow blower.
These types of distractions are not helpful when I should be focusing on things like Chemistry, or Reading 440. I am also quite distracted by state and national political news this week - so much is going on, and I find that I simply cannot just ignore it, even when I know I should be studying. It is also the start of the Great Back Yard Bird Count, and as I pulled into the driveway this afternoon, I just had to stop and do my first count. I have 6 different feeders in the backyard, and there were 8 different kinds of birds about the feeders within a fifteen minute time frame.
A week like this reminds me that when I am teaching, I need to be cognizant of my students distractions as well. I can force myself to be focused for long periods of time, but that has taken years of practice to achieve. When you are`young, hormones are raging, peer pressure is unbelievably strong, and school might not always be at the top of your priorities. How do we go about focusing our students attention on what we need them to learn? Adding variety to our teaching methods is certainly one way, but addressing the individual needs of each student may be the greatest challenge that we face.
