Keeping students focused can be difficult in a world filled with distractions -- which is why a renowned educator created a scientific solution to one of every teacher's biggest problems. Why is it so hard to get students to pay attention? Conventional wisdom blames iPhones, insisting that access to technology has ruined students' ability to focus. The logical response is to ban electronics in class. But acclaimed educator James M. Lang argues that this solution obscures a deeper problem: how we teach is often at odds with how students learn. Classrooms are designed to force students into long periods of intense focus, but emerging science reveals that the brain is wired for distraction. We learn best when able to actively seek and synthesize new information. In Distracted, Lang rethinks the practice of teaching, revealing how educators can structure their classrooms less as distraction-free zones and more as environments where they can actively cultivate their students' attention. Brimming with ideas and grounded in new research, Distracted offers an innovative plan for the most important lesson of all: how to learn.

"An exploration of some of the most intriguing college teachers' pedagogy, challenging traditional learning environments"--

A revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge—and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later. The digital era is beset by distraction, and it feels like things are only getting worse. At times like these, the distant past beckons as a golden age of attention. We fantasize about escaping our screens. We dream of recapturing the quiet of a world with less noise. We imagine retreating into solitude and singlemindedness, almost like latter-day monks. But although we think of early monks as master concentrators, a life of mindfulness did not, in fact, come to them easily. As historian Jamie Kreiner demonstrates in The Wandering Mind, their attempts to stretch the mind out to God—to continuously contemplate the divine order and its ethical requirements—were all-consuming, and their battles against distraction were never-ending. Delving into the experiences of early Christian monks living in the Middle East, around the Mediterranean, and throughout Europe from 300 to 900 CE, Kreiner shows that these men and women were obsessed with distraction in ways that seem remarkably modern. At the same time, she suggests that our own obsession is remarkably medieval. Ancient Greek and Roman intellectuals had sometimes complained about distraction, but it was early Christian monks who waged an all-out war against it. The stakes could not have been higher: they saw distraction as a matter of life and death. Even though the world today is vastly different from the world of the early Middle Ages, we can still learn something about our own distractedness by looking closely at monks’ strenuous efforts to concentrate. Drawing on a trove of sources that the monks left behind, Kreiner reconstructs the techniques they devised in their lifelong quest to master their minds—from regimented work schedules and elaborative metacognitive exercises to physical regimens for hygiene, sleep, sex, and diet. She captures the fleeting moments of pure attentiveness that some monks managed to grasp, and the many times when monks struggled and failed and went back to the drawing board. Blending history and psychology, The Wandering Mind is a witty, illuminating account of human fallibility and ingenuity that bridges a distant era and our own.

The purpose of this book is to help secondary school principals and college faculty fulfill their key role for continuous improvement planning of educational practices and safety at their institution. Rapid social and technological advances have motivated the consideration of student voice in schools across the United States. By merging student voice and educator expertise, an intergenerational perspective can emerge that more accurately portrays the strengths and limitations of a school. Strom and Strom began their research on student voice by partnering with adolescents and principals from several schools to identify topics they saw as appropriate for polling to improve schools. This effort led to the development of ten polls on school stress, career exploration, time management, attention and distraction, tutoring, peer support, school cheating, frustration, cyberbullying, and Internet learning. Every poll contains 15 to 20 multiple-choice items. The process model for polling includes a step-by-step procedure that educational leaders can use to plan and implement school improvement. Different methods of data analysis and ways to report overall evidence-based school results are presented by age, gender, grade and ethnicity. Student polling is distinctive from other assessment strategies because the target for data gathering is a single school, without comparison to other schools. This narrow base to assess student voice ensures poll results are anonymous and have local relevance to guide stakeholder responses. The results of polling can provide data-based evidence that can be used for continuous education improvement planning. An additional benefit is to separately assess students in special education, gifted and talented programs, and second language acquisition learners. Our web site at learningpolls.org is intended to further inform educational leaders and invite their collaboration.

Do you wish you could pay more attention and stop getting distracted? If so, you're not on your own. Do you find it easy to stay focused and pay attention, or does your mind tend to drift? Do you quickly start to think about something else, like a snack or the news, or daydream? Do the constant beeps and notifications from your phone or the sound of your siblings arguing in the background make it hard for you to concentrate? In short, do you think about everything other than what you're supposed to be doing? This is the right book for you A Harvard study from 2010 found that the average person's mind wanders 47% of the time. This means that nearly half of the time you're doing one thing, you're thinking about something else. With so many distractions, it's not surprising that people are finding it hard to concentrate. Why can't we focus? Focus is important because our lives are always busy and often overwhelming. Finding focus is also getting harder and harder. When you're up to your eyeballs at work and find yourself getting lost in social media or binge-watching YouTube, you might ask yourself, "Why can't I just focus?" The problem with distraction and trying to focus is, you know what you need to do, but you can't bring yourself to do it and you know what you want to accomplish, but you don't know how to get there. Technology is taking up too much of our time and focus The way we use technology is changing us as people and causing damage in all parts of our lives. Digital distractions are all around us, so it's easy to point the finger at them. The world is a confusing place, full of shapes and colors, sounds and smells that constantly stimulate our senses. Numerous psychological studies demonstrate that the use of technology, switching between tasks, and overstimulation have all contributed to higher levels of distraction in the classroom. Distraction is frequently blamed for poor performance and misbehavior at school. Distractions make it harder to concentrate on specific, assigned tasks. Digital learning tools are a new kind of distraction in the classroom. Guardians, teachers, students, and academics all have views about how technology is affecting a student's ability to concentrate in a classroom. Once we have a good understanding of the problem, we can turn our attention to practical ways to improve our ability to pay attention. Distraction is the shifting of a person's or a group's focus away from the selected object of attention and toward the source of distraction When we struggle to focus, it's simple to point the finger at technological interference or a lack of self-discipline, but a lot of it is biologically based.

A refreshing and hopeful guide to help new and veteran teachers thrive in our ever-changing world New Teacher Mindset is all about creating successful systems, practices, and protocols that make sense for today's teachers. To be the best teacher you can be, you need to understand how new technologies and a changing societal landscape have altered the needs of students—and how to modify your teaching approach accordingly. This book gives you a fresh take on topics like classroom management, project-based learning, group collaboration, increasing buy-in, and partnering with parents. The book is research-backed and provides concrete practices that have proven effective in real world classrooms. Each chapter includes a story to illustrate the topic of the chapter, followed by strategies, research, and practical activities that you can implement immediately to refresh your mindset and your classroom. Get fresh, modern ideas for elevating your classroom and teaching style Build on traditional teaching practices with new techniques designed for today's fast-paced, tech-driven world Use practical activities and reader reflection questions to transform your practice right away Learn how to revitalize your teaching by focusing on the classroom as a whole, the individual student, and the teacher This is an invaluable resource for K-12 educators and others working in the K-12 setting, all of whom need to learn to adapt and adjust to the constant shifting of the outside world. New Teacher Mindset is a roadmap for doing just that.

This second edition provides strategies to increase student engagement, develop cognitive skills, and empower students to take responsibility for their own learning.