When asked about school, many students will probably describe it as stressful, depressing, boring, or other negative adjectives. Karena Wong (10) mentions that “I just think it’s not interactive enough, and there isn’t enough communication.” Personally, I have always been one of those people as well because the thought of so many deadlines and tests have my brain riled up, and on top of that, most of  our time at school is just boring lectures. This got me thinking, however, about more specifically why people find school so boring.

When I look back on my childhood, I used to love learning new things. I would collect plants and try to discover new kinds in my neighborhood. I would also watch a lot of nature and history documentaries because they genuinely interested me. Contrastingly, all of that love for learning just disappears in a school setting. I constantly find myself groaning when teachers start posting millions of assignments on google classroom and canvas. So is the school curriculum the problem? Or is it the teachers? Maybe it depends on the teaching style and subject? I ended up doing some research on this.

According to the Indiana University’s High School Survey of Student Engagement, when asked about why they thought school was boring, 60 percent of the students said that they“ didn’t see the value in the work [they were] being asked to do” (livescience.com). Additionally, “More than 80 percent rated classroom discussion and debate at least ‘a little’ and sometimes ‘very’ exciting and engaging, and more than 70 percent felt this way about group projects” (livescience.com). Based on this, it is clear that the teaching style matters to countless students. To make learning interesting, teachers can try to add more projects or discussions rather than sticking with the cookie cutter lectures. 

I asked Mrs. Chavez, who teaches Algebra 2 at YLHS, to give me some insight on this topic from a teacher’s perspective. Firstly, she says  it might just be the student themself who is uninterested in the subject, and this can’t be helped. A lot of the classes students are taking are required for graduation, meaning it has nothing to do with interest. Mrs. Chavez believes passion is very important. When she was taking art back in school, she hated the class because it just wasn’t something she was interested in, but compared to that, her elective classes were so much more fun because she found math so fascinating. 

Mrs Chavez also said, “I think it’s a combination of things. I do think the teacher and the actual material play a big part.” When it comes to teaching, many teachers don’t care too much about trying to make the class more interactive. Even though a teacher’s sole purpose is to teach the material given, she believes it is important to at least make the class more fun. To do this, Mrs. Chavez arranges her desks in pods so that her students can work together and make the environment feel more comfortable. She believes that doing interactive work is beneficial for students to not only learn faster but also prevent them from getting bored. In addition to that, however, she also mentions that the district requires teachers to teach until a certain unit, meaning it is very difficult for her to add fun activities during lessons because we simply do not have time for that. It is very hard for a lot of teachers because they are not given that much freedom, but they can definitely change their teaching style and experiment a little to find the best option not only for their students but also themselves. Even in YLHS, where we have an amazing selection of teachers who try their best to help their students succeed, there is room for improvement when it comes to making school less boring for everyone.