As I entered my twenties and social media, internet etc became the most defining feature of my life, I've come to realize, that my attention span got really-really short I no longer can sit through a movie, without checking my phone, studying was usually suspended by me scrolling the news. As I learned, being distracted is better than being stuck, so I will consol myself with this: my brain just needs rewiring, and tends to use anything to distract itself from combusting. See? Easy solution.
But the book offers practical advice: 5 options are in front of us to decrease the amout of distraction that comes along the way.
An interesing, and much needed read in today's environment!

Distracted is a book that every parent should read and it's particularly useful for teachers. Primarily for use in secondary school/university classrooms, its also incredibly pertinent for parents.

Attention in children waxes and wanes and its hard to sustain especially when they are surrounded by so much technology. Lang's academic research is supported by theory, however, the book's tone is informal and its easy to read.
Lang provides strategies to sustain this attention and they are relatively easy to implement.

A must read book for all educators.

I was quite excited to read this book because I am an attention researcher and because I teach distracted university students. I had hoped that I might be exposed to a new viewpoint and maybe even learn something new in terms of students and distractions (and can be distracted myself, of course!). Overall, I felt that the strongest part of the book was the consideration of historical depictions and references to distraction. I found the remainder of the book was a typical book that considered various teaching strategies. If you are totally new to teaching and have read no other books on teaching, then this book will present a lot of good information and things to consider for your teaching. If you are well-versed on attention and have read a variety of books on teaching (and have experience with teaching), then Distracted does not offer a lot of new information.

Thanks to the author, NetGalley, and Basic Books for an opportunity to read an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

DISTRACTED by James M. Lang (Small Teaching) is addressed primarily to teachers and explains "Why Students Can't Focus and What You Can Do About It." Lang, professor of English at Assumption University, takes the provocative position that we need to "make a fundamental shift in our thinking: away from preventing distraction and toward cultivating attention." That's a tough call, especially in the COVID era, which he addresses in his updated preface. Throughout the text, Lang really stresses the importance of developing a community and actively encouraging mutual respect for other students. He also advocates adopting a more empathetic approach so as to "not jump so quickly to the assumption that a distracted student is a poor or inconsiderate one." His research is impressive and well-documented with over 20 pages of notes. However, the text itself feels fairly dense -- I would have preferred quick chapter summaries and more "tips and tricks" aimed at practitioners.

The book isn't clearly advertised as a resource for teachers, but once I began reading, I realized I was not the target audience. That being said, it is a valuable source for teachers in keeping students' attentions in class.

Although I usually request fictional books on Netgalley, this nonfiction book about teaching caught my eye. In these times of corona, where I suddenly found myself teaching online to students I haven't met in real life before, I could really needs some pointers to keep the attention.
James describes very in depth the reasons for getting distracted (yes, we all get absorbed in our phones, but even in the non-mobile-era teachers have been struggling with keeping their audiences captivated). So, for me, it was very nice to read suggestions and tips on how I could engage my students, even online. And also, to understand that it is hard for students to keep their attention, especially when they have some much on their plate nowadays.
In all, I think I can use some of the practical tips given by James and it certainly gave me more insights into the student brain. Four out of five stars from me and a special thank you to Netgalley for providing the arc.

When you were in high school, how much did you see people disciplined for being distracted in class?
One of my teachers used to (by his own admission) throws a chalkboard eraser at distracted students in the back of the room. You could see the eraser marks on the back wall sometimes. You might notice by the “chalkboard eraser” reference: this was pre-iPhone days. Are classroom distractions a new thing?

While distractions have proved easier to come by since 2007 (the year the iPhone came out and my senior year of high school), to say that pre-2007 students weren’t similarly distracted in class is almost laughable. I didn’t have a smartphone until after I graduated from college, but I was still frequently distracted in class. When the thing you’re supposed to be paying attention to seems unworthy of your attention, the brain finds other things to do. Smartphones have diverted that attention mostly to one place for a majority of people, but take away student phones and I promise you they would find other distractions on which to shift their attention.
That is why it was so refreshing to read James Lang’s new book, Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It. Lang is clear that distraction is a natural state of the human brain, but is not simply defeatist. It’s right there in the title: what you can do about it. So what is the answer? Lang writes:
(We) need to turn our heads away from distraction and toward attention. Our challenge is not to wall off distractions; our challenge is to cultivate attention, and help students use it in the service of meaningful learning.

So how do teachers cultivate attention in the classroom? That is what Lang explores for the rest of the book. From student buy-in on device policies to the teacher circulating the room or strategically placing oneself at the back of the room, Lang gives some simple advice that is commonly given in good teaching training. However, some of his advice is less simple and more philosophical, shifting the paradigm of your entire classroom and your relationship to your students.

One of Lang’s more philosophical ideas that will shift how I teach: transparent talk. He suggests letting students in on not only the “how” but the “why” behind everything you do. Proactively explaining why each building block of learning in the classroom is important will keep students’ attention when you might otherwise lose them. Lang gives examples:
• “Today I am lecturing because this material is incredibly complex and I’d like to boil it down to a few essentials for you. You’re very welcome to follow along or take notes on your laptop; you’ll find the slides in the course web pages.”
• “We’re going to spend the last fifteen minutes of class thinking and talking about why we should still read poems like this one: Why do they still matter to us today, two hundred years after they were composed? You don’t need to take notes for the next part of class, so I want devices closed, so we can give our full attention to one another.”
• “We use groups in this context because I want to help you connect with the peers you’ll be working with on your final projects. You don’t need your devices here; I want you to focus on working with each other, and you will only need one person to record your work on the whiteboards around the room. Afterward you can take pictures of the board if you want to preserve the ideas for yourself.”

Such transparent talk articulates whether they will need their devices, but that’s really a side issue. More importantly, it clarifies the purposes of all of our work. It makes the classroom more like a communal learning experience than like a magician performing for his mystified audience.
This will shift and already has shifted my entire teaching strategy in large and small ways, especially as I am teaching virtually and in-person at the same time right now. Ensuring that students understand the learning objective for the day is one thing. It can often be like someone saying “Here, this is what we’re going to learn today” and then 45 minutes later you come back and say “Hey, remember this? Look, we actually learned it!” and students are to be shocked and awed. Deconstructing every step and making it clear why that step is so important, that process is something that so many teachers miss but will help students immensely in staying attentive. Why? Because they understand the immediate purpose. As Lang says, learning isn’t a magic trick anymore. It’s something that each student has control over by focusing his or her attention on a specific purpose.

Other principles of Lang’s that were especially helpful include employing 1) student curiosity and 2) what Lang calls “signature attention activities”. Curiosity is another aspect teachers often miss because we assume that students should be interested in our material because it’s interesting to us or because they should know it’s important. (Then we get frustrated when they say things like “We talk about China SO much. Why do we have to learn about China?” Or is that just me?) But Lang conveys a sort of manifesto in his chapter on cultivating curiosity in the classroom, urging teachers to think about what questions first interested them in their chosen field. For me, I started college with a curiosity about what the rest of the world is like, what makes people different, and how your past or your nation’s past affects who you are today. Is it surprising, then, that I am teaching world history and psychology? If I share this curiosity with my students on the first day rather than bore them with specifics about the syllabus, how much more likely is it that they will be interested in the content? So, what is it for you? What first made you interested in your chosen content area? And how can you translate that to students?
While curiosity is important in cultivating student attention, sustaining that attention takes work. Lang shares some surprising research on student attention that essentially shows attention flagging every few minutes and sometimes more often than that, so Lang argues that teachers should be keenly aware of when attention is flagging and be ready with a quick change of pace. That doesn’t mean it has to be something big or even something that takes more than a minute, but teachers should have “signature attention activities” in the back pocket such as an engaging question you can tailor to the day’s lesson easily, or an image that relates to the content in some way that students can analyze. These activities and many more don’t take very long and don’t take a lot of planning, but they can have tremendous effects on student attention. Lang gives a lot more examples of these types of activities in Distracted.

Since Distracted was mostly written pre-pandemic, there is a lot of specific advice in Lang’s book that won’t work under COVID restrictions. (For example, I can’t circulate the room right now even for those few students who are in-person.) However, the vast majority of the book is full of advice that can be implemented in big and small ways no matter where you are or what you are teaching. It is honestly the most applicable book on the art of teaching that I have read since good old Harry Wong’s The First Days of School. So if you are a teacher, especially one interested in educational psychology or how to cultivate attention, please read Distracted. Our students will be better for it.

I received a review copy of Distracted courtesy of Basic Books and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

In all, it's a great look at current research and suggestions on student (and human) attention. The suggestions for helping students better attend to learning are very promising.

I really like the The Course Questions for each class - "What fills you with wonder?" etc that he quotes from Rebecca Zambrano's essay, "The 'Big Bang' of Motivation: Questions to Evoke Wonder in our Students." The idea of building these answers into our syllabus and first day activities to capture student attention rather than telling policies at them is great advice.

I will be trying out many of the strategies he discusses in the second part of the book to help build focused attention ... when I'm back in front of humans. Some strategies (varying physical space, moving around, and similar human to human physical interactions) don't have good analogues in a Zoom call. However, I will be finding ways to adust variations in activities and better sign-posting in my online classes to help students' flagging attention.

I was also heartened to see I'm already doing several activites (introduced in my courses this semester) from the Assessed Attention chapter. It's good to know that my approaches of low-stakes assessments and research/presentation projects are discussed positively here.

It's a good read. Lang's personality comes out even as he shares what could otherwise be dry. Recommended.

In many ways I enjoyed this book. I teach adults and that is the target audience. The thesis is that it is not enough when teaching to avoid distraction, e.g. through laptop bans. The larger aim is to cultivate attention. Each chapter has actionable suggestions for how to do this, applicable both to large and small group teaching. What I felt was missing from this book was the responsibilities students have to cultivate attention, and how to communicate those expectations. Given the students discussed here are adults, I sometimes found the arguments patronizing. It was a practical, readable, helpful book for the teaching of adults, though, and I recommend it.

Unfortunately, I didn't find this book all that helpful. There are some basic key takeaways, but nothing that I found all that innovative or new (I've been teaching for 5 years now). The author is a college professor, so most of what he talks about it is suitable for large lecture halls. He talks about this in his introduction but claims there this book could also be used in lower grades. However, I found that to be a stretch.

Great book, filled with helpful strategies and condensing information in a great applicable way. I really appreciate the practical applications discussed in this book as well.

Unfortunatley I have read similar books to this many times before. I am not sure at what point teachers transition from new to veteran (5 years? 7 years? 10 years?). I have been teaching for 4 years at this point and all advice in this book were skills I learned either in college training or within my first year on the job.

This book reads very much like a doctorial dissertation. I can understand why many of these concepts were new to the author as he has worked as a professor and not in a traditional classroom setting. They are all relevant and important topics, and I can understand how someone who may struggle with classroom managment could benefit from this advice.

It is very much geared towards educators who work with high school or college level students. I went into reading this looking to see if there were any new techniques or ideas for student engagment. However, I learned all of this previously from other first year teaching guide books or on the job. I might suggest this to new first year teachers and appreciate what the author tried to do.

This book provides some interesting thoughts about distraction. The twist on deliberately focusing on attention is very interesting. The book is directed at those teaching in higher education but teachers and adult learners will gain some insight on distraction and attention. The author does a good job bringing up the debate of technology use in the classroom too. As a high school administrator, I could hear some of staff’s thoughts and ideas echoed on the pages. I also could hear the advice of modeling the behavior you want to see. Although those in the Higher Education field will find this most applicable, it was a very interesting read.

Thank you NetGalley and Hachette Book group for an advance reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.