Willy Wood Podcast

I listened to Willy Wood's podcast on attention, it was interesting to hear about different concept and things that I can do for my students. It gave some very helpful tips as far as keeping their attention and obtaining their attention for lessons and around the classroom. One of the things that I found interesting was that students don't always have ADHD, they show symptoms of it but in a school the environment is sometimes very distracting and interferes with their abilities to focus. Schools and classrooms are very distracting to some students that already struggle with the concept of focusing. Kids are constantly walking down the halls, the classroom echoes particular noises, windows, music, etc. it makes it extremely difficult for a teacher to control 30-40 students at one time and help keep them on task.

Another concept that I liked that Willy presented were the two main things that are supposed to take place before we attempt our basic needs; sleeping, feeding ourselves, and natural bodily functions such as breathing, sleeping, etc. He also hit upon the desire of sexual attraction, adolescents will focus on their attraction to other students rather than paying attention in the classroom, they will focus on someone that they are attracted to and these strong desires present a conflict with focusing and their attention is directed in another faucet other than learning.

Attention grabbers are changing throughout the entire school year, students are always evolving and changing their styles or how they pay attention in school. Certain attributes in the classroom may become immune in a way where the students learn to ignore it or react in different ways, these can be detrimental to the development in the classroom. Students in the secondary system are developing in physical ways, emotional, and physiologically, teachers need to be constantly adapting to keep their students attention and evolving with the new concepts as students are. Willy mentioned several key points that were right in line with the book as well, students need ways of interpreting information and encoding it in their mental selves. This way the students will be able to relate to the concepts that are being taught and more easily recall that particular information at a later time. Adolescents that are being introduced to concepts that are essential to the classroom development should not be doing multiple things at once, if you as an educator expect them to be able to retain any of that information you should focus their attention on one concept at a time.

The podcast was very interesting to listen to, Willy was very informative about different methods that you can use to help your students be able to focus better and learn concepts better. Attention in an 80 minute period with teenagers is already hard enough, these tips are very helpful and I look forward to applying them in my own classroom to help my own students learn better.