Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
When I take classes I sometime pity the teachers who teach boring subjects who have to speak in front of the students. Some people tell me that a good teacher can make even the dullest topic interesting, but I wonder how?
I remember when I was in college I had to take some incredibly boring classes with some pretty good teachers. They used every trick in the book to attempt to make the class interesting but hit a stone wall. Why? Because the topic was boring and uninteresting to most of the students.
While it may not be possible to attain every student's interest, it is possible to increase the number of students that are interested.
-Be enthusiastic yourself. People often will feed off of the passion of someone else. A strategy for this is to relate the subject to yourself. Think about personal experiences that relate to the topic.
-Relate the topic to the students. Make the students a part of their own learning. Ask for any personal experiences related to the subject. They will take more ownership if they or their friends have experienced it. Don't make the topics so far away when some have first hand experience.
-Relate the topic to what the students are interested in. They will be more interested if they understand it or have some background in it. If you're teaching physics to a group of students interested in baseball, talk about how much force is required to hit the ball in order for the ball to travel ___ distance.
-Have the students move. Some students are auditory learners, some are visual. Some learn through bodily kinesthetics. Let them manipulate objects and move around. If the kids are learning to tell time, have them be the hands on the clock and lie down in the appropriate place of a clock to demonstrate the correct time.
These are some examples but, ironically, I've got to go to school.
When students grumble now and then about my subject being boring, I will act with mock outrage and tell them something like this: "I'm teaching STATISTICS! If I could make this subject entertaining, I'd be in Hollywood making millions of dollars. Instead, I'm here teaching you for whatever the school district pays me. If you just listen and give me a chance, I'm pretty good at explaining how things work and you just might learn something. But making this entertaining.....this ain't TV, and David Letterman has better material to work from than this. So give me a break!"
When students grumble now and then about my subject being boring, I will act with mock outrage and tell them something like this: "I'm teaching STATISTICS! If I could make this subject entertaining, I'd be in Hollywood making millions of dollars. Instead, I'm here teaching you for whatever the school district pays me. If you just listen and give me a chance, I'm pretty good at explaining how things work and you just might learn something. But making this entertaining.....this ain't TV, and David Letterman has better material to work from than this. So give me a break!"
At least it usually gets a smile from them.
I just had a statistics class and, boy!, did the teacher made it fun! For years I heard how difficult and boring the subject can be but he just proved a lot of people wrong.
One thing to do to make a subject interesting and appealing is to talk with anybody that is involved in that subject or is an expert. Usually those people will tell you how much fun it is to them and will tell you why by sharing experience on the subject that made it fun for them. You may get engrossed on the subject and also also learn the utility of it to the students.
When I take classes I sometime pity the teachers who teach boring subjects who have to speak in front of the students. Some people tell me that a good teacher can make even the dullest topic interesting, but I wonder how?
I remember when I was in college I had to take some incredibly boring classes with some pretty good teachers. They used every trick in the book to attempt to make the class interesting but hit a stone wall. Why? Because the topic was boring and uninteresting to most of the students.
What is the teacher to do?
I think you get three options. Fall in love with the material or fall in love with the teacher. I don't mean fall in love as in love-love. Lastly, suck it up and do a countdown of the class. You have to approach any class as, "I am getting something out of this."
I had a class that I did not want to take. So, I try to find away to get all gungho about it and its working. I went to the bookstore to get the book two days after the bookstore opened for the semester. They did not have the book, some nimrod told me it was on order. I kept checking back. Class starts, I ended up having to borrow someones book and print off all of the parts we were using. Only 12 people have this book. We are two weeks into it and the adjunct finds out that the book is discontinued. A portion of the material needs a slide projector but it does not work. When it is fixed then we are moving really quick to catch up with that material.
Every aspect of that class sucked. It was an uphill battle. The thing of it is, that I think that most of us went in with the attitude of finding anything that we could latch on to. Adjunct included. I can only imagine how much he dreaded going in.
The moral of the story is that sometimes you just can't win and that is the way it goes. Suck it up.
I'm not a professional teacher, but I once was a part of a "speaker's bureau" for immunizations. I had to give a talk at a Rotary Club (they gave us some money), and before the talk someone said "I'm anxious to see how you make immunizations interesting". At the end of my talk/slide show, they had tons of questions! The moderator had to stop us. Now, to tell the truth, I have no idea how I engaged these people. Just sayin', it can happen.
Even the most boring core subject material can be spiced up by a good instructor determined to do so - for example, in teaching statistics, refer constantly to gambling, etc. Once heard of one military instructor who had to teach a class on how to requisition something through the Army supply system - OK, fine, he used the example of a case of condoms.
Likewise in teaching math to kids who are more likely to become plumbers than doctors, once they have the basics down, try to do examples relating to estimating cost for a plumbing job. Teaching a kid how to balance a checkbook or even work Quicken is never wasted.
A subject is boring to a student when they don't relate to it. Show them how this will help them get something out of life that they want, the boredom goes away. Bada-bing, bada-boom.
Last edited by M3 Mitch; 06-22-2009 at 03:55 PM..
Reason: fix grammar
^^^My daughters had a math teacher who taught "averages" like this: If John Elway (this was a few years ago) threw X passes for Y yards, how many yards was his average pass? She used real numbers from the footballs games. The kids ate it up.
Your right many boring subjects to me will be interesting to someone else. Lets for the sake of argument say the topic being lectured or discussed by the teacher is boring to the students. Can a good teacher make most of the students change their mind and think, hey this is an interesting subject after all?
Could a good teacher make 17th Century English Poetry interesting to troubled inner city kids, or macho Truck Drivers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by coffee4me
I think this is very subjective. What is boring to you may not be boring to me. What specific subjects are you speaking of that are boring to you?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
