Strawberries are good for you. They have nutrients our bodies need and sugars our bodies crave. A fresh, ripe strawberry straight from my garden is about the best tasting object ever created in my opinion and far outperforms the unnaturally huge, weird tasting strawberries from the supermarket.
There is one time, however, when a strawberry tastes like absolute death.
Right after eating a huge candy bar or a brownie covered in frosting, the strawberry, upon being eaten directly afterward, becomes seemingly sugar-free; the strawberry flavor still exists yet its sugar seems to have vanished.
Now imagine: you are a 15-year-old in 9th grade with a cell phone, a laptop, a TV at home, and video games at your fingertips. Your brain, being hardwired to be stimulated and learning, has easy access to the most stimulating devices ever conceived. Even if you were the most disciplined and respectful student, you are still an animal, and traditional homework and school is no match for the overly stimulating devices surrounding you.
Why do kids get bored in class and go on their phone? Because learning real skills is like a strawberry, and playing games on your phone is like a brownie sundae. Doodling student? They've given up on the 'pointless' lesson at hand in favor of anything their brain can do to get a little stimulation.
If you have ever felt bored there is nothing wrong with you. In fact, you are more than normal. If you feel bored in class, or at work, or with a friend, it is because your brain, arguably the most powerful object in the known universe, wants to be fed. It's hungry. It needs stimulation. It needs to be challenged. You are normal because that is the normal function of the brain: craving growth.
When I teach a class, the first thing I say is “Everyone take out your cell phones and put them right on your desk, go on them whenever you want.” When I see a student going on their phone instead of paying attention to what we are doing in class, I know that what I'm doing is too boring, not stimulating enough, and it's my problem as the teacher.
Even if the phone was not an option, the student would get distracted in some other way because no matter how many times you take something away or create a rule of discipline, you can never fully control the brain of another person, and so phone or not: that student is not learning anything if they are bored.
The issue is that now distractions are super-charged aided by technology. As educators, it is important to allow our students to understand what boredom is, that they are normal, and that understanding it is the first step in creating a dialogue between teachers and students about how to morph a learning experience from boring to useful.
