I always know when travel sports seasons begin, because the students who play those sports struggle to stay awake in class. Constant noise and flashing lights in their face is their baseline for stimulation anything less than that bores them.They’re physically exhausted because they stay up late into the night either playing video games, playing on travel sports teams, or doing nefarious things online, unsupervised in their bedrooms. These are the kids who’ve been raised by television and video games. (They’re paying the tuition, after all.) But some parents adopt the attitude of “grades don’t matter… I know my kid is smart… he doesn’t have to prove it to other people.” And they’re usually correct their child is very smart, but just really lazy when it comes to assignments.They’ve been overstimulated their entire lives outside of school. They weren’t mean about it… I teach at private schools, so the parents are almost always supportive of the teachers. I’ve had students tell me, truthfully, that their parents don’t care about their grades, so why should they put forth any effort? I’ve had parents tell me this directly as well. “I don’t care because I’m a preteen rebel” sounds better than “I’m in way over my head.”They’re mimicking their parents’ attitudes towards school. Pretending like you don’t care about, say, math class is more face-saving than admitting that you’ve made it to seventh grade (when they start adding letters to math equations) without being able to do basic multiplication or division. Students who’ve been pushed along through elementary school with a lot of support from adults sometimes struggle to do things on their own, so they just shut down. I teach middle school students (ages 11–14), and middle school is all about fostering independence, responsibility, and preparing students for high school. These are the usual reasons:They are overwhelmed and shutting down is a defense mechanism. In all of my years of teaching, I’ve encountered dozens of completely unmotivated/disinterested students.
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