Case Study: Huy, the Bored

Huy is an 8th grade student at a private Vietnamese middle/high school in Ho Chi Minh City who is largely uninterested in school. He's discouraged by his consistently average performance, and his parents' reprimands for not having high enough scores in English and Physics.

The best part of school for Huy is seeing his friends. He's bored by classroom instruction, and has received several behavior marks from teachers. He often falls asleep in class, causes disruptions in the classroom, or neglects time given in class for activities and assignments to goof around with his friends. Recently, Huy was penalized at school for using his smartphone in class to send rude messages to others on Facebook. However, Huy excels at phsyical and competition-based activities, like playing sports or doing hands-on experiments.

Huy is an intelligent and creative person, but he spends as little time as possible on his homework assignments. They are hastily and carelessly prepared, sometimes given back to him by teachers becasue they are illegible or incomplete. He is unhappy with most of his scores, but doesn't make a self-motivated effort to improve them. He frequently argues with teachers that his scores should be higher, and directly criticizes the teacher's assessment methods and rubrics.

Student-Centered Techniques to help engage Huy:

-Student Choice: Basically, Huy is bored and unengaged by materials at school, with the exception of PE/active  classes. Educators could help engage Huy in his own learning by encouraging him to share his interests. Students will often be more likely to learn in a way that makes sense to them and features subjects/activities that they are interested in. The Student-Centered practice of offering choice would give Huy a chance to determine his own topics to explore, and develop projects/assignments independently, with guidance from the teacher.

-Cooperation: Huy might benefit from being given a classroom role to perform regularly, like taking attendance, monitoring turn-ins for individual assignments, officiating group competition-based activities such as Quiz Games, have him perform cold-calling drills or conduct random quizzes, or enforcing classroom rules. Teach fairness.

-Autonomy: GIve Huy, and his classmates, a chance to determine the classroom tules and standards the students wish to enforce. Let the students, like Huy, propose their ideas for appropriate assignments, assessment, and evaluations. Introduce peer review.

-Project-Based: Delegate a coordination role to Huy that allows him to be social and collaborative while learning, but also accountable for the work of his group and responsible for turning in the group work.