Own Thoughts: Difficulties at Home that Promotes Disinterest in Schoolwork for Students

It's been a while since I've last posted, which is obvious. Rather than feeling mostly ashamed of my lack of action to post my assignment, I saw this hiatus as a learning experience. A month ago when I missed my fourth blog post, it was due to an urgent family issue. Throughout the next couple of weeks, I've been bothered by what happened at home that I didn't feel like posting my assignment response. But, when another two weeks passed and I still hadn't posted anything, I realized that I was going too far in neglecting my assignment. (Even as I write this blog post, I am still neglecting the assignment that I should have posted weeks ago).

This experience made me think about two topics: 1) realizing that students may be going through the same experience I am, which is having issues at home; thus, they are unmotivated or disinterested to be at school and do homework; and 2) questioning when it is too much for students to neglect their assignments and do something about it or leave them be until things are better at home.

While it may be obvious, sometimes when one goes through similar experiences him/herself, he/she is able to fully understand and emphasize with others. I thought more about having students who are unmotivated in class. Is it because they are uninterested in the material being taught? If so, how do I make it more appealing to them? Or is it because something else unrelated to school is bothering them? How can I use the classroom and what is being taught to "cheer" the students up and show them that there is an optimistic side to life? Besides making sure that students understand what they need to learn, I think it is the teacher's responsibility to care and watch out for students' unusual behaviors. This last statement may also seem obvious, but there are teachers who do not care for the well-being of their students.

However, when is it too much or nothing works? For example, many weeks has passed and the student still doesn't want to do any assignments even when you, the teacher, knows that things have been resolved at home. Or, if things haven't be resolved and go on for months, how do you work with a student who just doesn't seem interested no matter what you do? For my first question, I'd say from the start of noticing the unusual behavior to figure out what the student is going through. Then, rather than letting him/her miss their assignments or give extension dates, give them inspiration to do their work. As for the second question, I don't have an answer yet. My first thought would be to have the student go to a psychiatrist, but I'm not sure if that option is too extreme or not.

Anyways, these are just some thoughts that I had. Perhaps they are explanations to my lack of motivation in completing the assignment, even though I knew that I should be completing it.