When I read Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, by Johann Hari, I was immediately struck by how much resonated with me as a person, but also as a teacher. Growing up in the fast-paced world we currently do, it’s no wonder children struggle to pay attention in class. Teachers, you’re not just contending with the onset of the pandemic (yes, it did happen, and the education world isn’t adequately considering its effects, but that’s another conversation). You’re also confronting a generation of children who have grown up with immediate gratification, fast-moving internet, and social media. These children have grown up accessing a huge wealth of information, with everything bright and exciting on a screen. Within a minute, they expose themselves to several items of information and entertainment. If something isn’t interesting, they can simply swipe on by.
Yet in the classroom, we expect to engage these children in one activity, often one they may not have much interest in, for periods of up to an hour or more. An interesting find by Johann Hari was that ‘between 2003 and 2011 diagnoses of ADHD soared in the United States by 43 percent overall’ and ‘in Britain the increase has also been extraordinary’. He explains that ‘for every child who was diagnosed with ADHD’ in 1986 ‘there are now one hundred kids in this position.’
The book goes on to dive into a breadth of research that examines the two sides being argued. Some say it is entirely biological, while others argue that environmental factors play a large part. It delves into the affects of other changing factors, such as diet and pollution, looking at how these could also impact our ability to focus. Either way, these figures show that our ability to pay attention is changing. But the way I see it, the school system in the UK has expectations that are increasing and doesn’t take into account the fast pace at which the world is changing. The expectations of teachers are outdated and unreasonable.
How can we help?
The system we currently work with expects a lot from both teachers and children, not allowing much space for the personal and emotional problems we face with children every day. Here at Teacher Toolbox, we have acknowledged that focus can be a problem. Sometimes children need time and space to reset before they’re ready to learn.
Children are facing their own problems at home, such as parental separation, financial hardship and domestic abuse. They may also just be facing problems that feel huge to them, such as something that happened on the playground. All these factors are going to have an impact on their readiness to learn and this can be time-consuming. You want to emotionally support the children in your class, but you also face these high expectations for learning, so managing it all is really challenging.
Download for FREE now
With all of this in mind, we have started ‘Find Your Focus’ bundles, so you can create a go-to for children when they need calm, focus and a time out. Print our resources, which you can download here for FREE, and we suggest you create a box with a variety of toys, colouring, games, anything you can find, that your class can go to when they need to find their focus. Download our focus resources today.
