Lectures at university in the 1990s, when you can’t focus.
Imagine the scene, its 1996, and you are sitting in a university lecture theatre.
The lecturer explains the subject, but you cant concentrate, for longer than 10 seconds, 20 seconds max.
How do I know how short the students concentration span was?
Because it was me, I was that easily distracted student.
I tried my best to concentrate, I even timed myself, to see how long I could listen to the lecturer.
Not an isolated incident
This was not an isolated incident.
In fact I can trace this distractibility way back to my early days in school.
These were the days in the late 1970’s when schools weren’t really geared up for differentiation of teaching, according to the needs of the student.
In fact there wasn’t even a national curriculum!
Primary (elementary) school was confusing to a young child, especially one that would miss important information being imparted by the teacher.
Important information, such as what the task was we needed to do!
This was an issue, as information wasn’t always written on the board, and teaching assistants didn’t exist.
So I missed information.
Why didn’t you ask?
Maybe I did, maybe I stopped.
I probably stopped because I got told off, for not paying attention.
How do I know this, it was a long time ago.
I spent many break and lunchtimes, alone in a classroom.
In primary school it wasn’t called detention, it was called ‘lines’
For those younger people unfamiliar with the concept of lines, let me explain.
Lines was a punishment, that entailed writing a sentence over and over again, for at least a page.
But sometimes you were told to keep going, until told to stop.
This meant if you were lucky, you would get just enough break to quickly go to the toilet, before having to line up, ready to come back inside (the toilet was outside).
An example of lines, was to write sentences such as ‘I must try harder in lessons’, or I must listen in lessons, to instructions from my teacher’.
Looking back I’m assuming it was the lack of work, due to not understanding what to do, that resulted in me getting punished regularly.
I was well behaved, and tried my best to be good.
At least I thought I was being good.
I just remember my whole body being rigid and tensed, like I was trying to act like was expected, literally like I had a metal pole through my spine.
The punishments at primary school , started in the second year there.
I’m not sure why, but all the other children in my class were taken through to another classroom, for music practice around the piano, but I was told to stay behind alone.
So I sat there alone in the classroom.
Now I don’t know whether this was a one off, but the evidence says it wasn’t.
Apparently I must of mentioned it to my mum, as she turned up at the school, and found me sat in the classroom alone.
She certainly had words, to the school, as shes the sort of person to speak her mind.
Secondary school
My first day at secondary school, was quiet an eye opener.
Going from a school of 150 children, to a school of 1500, certainly took some getting used to.
But there were some interesting lessons, and I made new friends.
Listening to what was required didn’t seem such an issue, but remembering things was.
This is where I sometimes have issues, as a qualified teacher. I recognise similar traits in some of my students.
Is the student being bad, or do they genuinely have problems with remembering things like equipment and homework.
At school, I wasn’t trying to break the rules, I wasn’t trying to get in trouble. I would write the homework down, then forget to check the book I had written it down in, and then only remember when in the classroom, and the teacher asked for it.
I still do this today with checking my Google Calander, unless I leave notes in prominent places, to remind me.
Obviously forgetting to do homework, has consequences, namely detention.
Well detention in the plural sense, as I had many.
In fact ordinary detentions weren’t enough, and I also progressed to the so called ‘headmasters detentions’, on a Friday evening.
They weren’t all given for not handing in homework, or forgetting pens, there were other reasons.
Reasons such as occasional skipping of lessons, or fighting (in self defence, but I didn’t take any prisoners, if attacked!) .
I left school at 16, with a few qualifications, and started a course at the local technical college.
There I studied electronics servicing.
I did quite well in the first year, though returned on day release to do the second part of the qualification.
The second part was a bit more theoretical, and classroom based.
Again my brain started to drift off, at inconvenient moments.
My note taking during the lectures, was at best patchy, and incomplete.
By now you are probably seeing a patten emerging, a pattern that didn’t improve when I left education.
Open Hell Office
Who came up with the idea of open plan offices, seriously who thought it was a good idea?
Whilst they do have advantages for many people, such as easy communication, for distracted types, it was hell.
It was hell due to not being able to concentrate on my work.
I was working on projects, and I needed quiet, not chatter.
Chatter would immediately cause my brain to tune in to the chatter.
This meant that I lost the thread of what I was previously working on.
It then might take a while to refocus, as my brain had overwritten whatever I was previously thinking about, before I was distracted.
Lessons Learned
Looking back now, I can see how I could have done things differently, but I hadn’t really appreciated I was different.
I assumed everyone was basically the same, and that I was just a bit slow and thick.
I use the word slow, as the nursery rhyme that contains the words ‘but he shall earn but a penny a day, because he can’t work any faster’, really resonated at Primary school.
In fact I thought it was written about people like me, people who couldn’t do the work fast, who didn’t understand!
How did you graduate then?
By devising my own learning methods, and working really hard.
Not getting much from the lectures was an issue, but I came to realise that I was a big picture thinker.
This was a game changer, as I started looking at the subjects on a macro scale.
What I mean is that instead of looking at a small aspect of a subject, I would imagine the big picture, and work inwards.
So if I was studying economics, rather than learn a small topic within economics, and build on it, I would do the opposite.
I would imagine the whole world as a system, and how it worked.
The I would look at regional trade and economics.
The national etc.
I would link the topics that were required into my overall whole world visualisation.
It worked for me, and meant I graduated.
I also went on to do a master level teaching qualification.
This might sound an odd career choice for someone who didn’t do well at school, but that was the point.
I went into teaching to help the kids that were left behind by the system.
I also wanted to reform it.
Now I found teachers a strange lot, from the other side, the side of being in the staffroom, and in front of the kids.
Some would complain of the conditions, but didn’t seem to have any radical plans to change the system.
I did however gain an important insight into the challenges and pressures, of being a classroom teacher.
Teaching is fast paced, and helps my focus.