SavageTimes

“My son is so bored in school.”

“She shouldn’t be bored.  She should be excited to learn!”

“Every day she complains of being bored.  I’ve asked her teacher if we can give her more challenges, but I don’t think I’m getting through.”

“I don’t want my kids to be bored at school.  I want them to be engaged and passionate!”

Those are all quotes from friends, acquaintances or even parents of my own students.

I’m not that parent.  I’m the parent who refused to put my son into the Gifted Program during his school career, even though he was bored to tears every single day throughout elementary, middle and high school.

Now in Running Start, a program where he can take college level courses and graduate with an Associates’ Degree at the same time he gets his High School Diploma, he’s still bored.  He’s going to double up on classes starting Winter Quarter so he can graduate a year early and start college early.  And I will bet anyone all my Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books that he’ll be bored doing that, too.

In fact, the kid will be bored until he’s translating ancient Sumerian texts full time or writing historical fiction while teaching himself Mandarin.  Yes, he does those things–he’ll probably be hired out of college by the FBI or CIA or NSA to translate obscure Turkish dialects.  And to be perfectly honest, he’ll probably be “bored” doing that, at least some of the time.  Boredom to him means it doesn’t take a lot of work.  But that’s OK.

He is challenged every day by the other aspects of life.  Like making friends.  And knowing what to do with them.  Or not walking away in the middle of unloading the dishwasher or cleaning the bathroom because an idea popped into his head or he suddenly understood a phrase of Latin he read.

My daughter has been bored from day one, too.  But she has found solace in the social aspect of school.  She is the opposite of her brother: she is my wildly creative hummingbird who flits from one project to another.  At any moment she may be trying out a new recipe or creating her own method for painting nails or sculpting adorable creatures out of clay.  She has a fabulous squad of tightknit friends, and many more waiting in the wings.

School bores her because it is hard: thinking in such structured methods and sitting down all day, listening to her teachers, not being able to run out in the rain whenever she wants…that’s boring.

It’s been suggested to me that I put her in an artsy private school or one of our district’s Choice schools. But she’d be bored there, too.

A lot of times, “boredom” to a kid means they aren’t getting to do exactly what they want.  Doesn’t it mean that for adults, too?

I was bored in school.  I don’t know many of us adults who weren’t.  And I’m not sure when we all started deciding school was supposed to be amazingly exciting and constantly passionate.  School is SCHOOL.  It’s to learn, and to learn how to learn, and hopefully not be traumatized.

Can we have fun in school?  Most definitely.  Can we do more than just lecture and take notes?  Always. Can we try for some passion?  As a teacher, I do, every day.  But it’s not always successful: I currently teach US History.  There are some fascinating pieces to US History.  Pieces I can do improv with,  or mock debates, or in depth group projects that encourage the kids to really dig deep into a topic.

Then there are the pieces that are really boring and, to paraphrase my kids, stupid.

And yet, often, at the quiet, boring, stupid pieces of US History, my students and I have the best times.  Even better times then when we are all excited and passionate.  Because we are bored, and our minds are quiet, and unfocused, and open.  We find peace in the boring, stupid pieces.  We find discussions that may be slightly off topic but teach us who we are.  We find laughter.

When I worked in the Chicago corporate office of an Engineering/Architectural firm, I had a lot of super boring, stupid days.  The meetings were insane.  I do not like meetings.  Still don’t.  Serious waste of time.  Right?  At least in terms of the business end of things, which honestly could be reviewed or communicated in ten minutes flat.  But I had to get through them, and because I did, I learned about my boss and my colleagues: how they interacted with the rest of us, with the world.  I learned about myself, even though it wasn’t always in the moment that I realized I was learning about myself.

I made really great friends that I still have, even though a lot of the actual knowledge or what I even did in school or most of my jobs is gone.

I learned how to LIVE. And living is sometimes boring.

What are we teaching our children if we are telling them that life should always be passionate, engaging, and exciting?