Teacher says winning teens' attention is a daily battle in literature class
Writer and Tabasalu High School literature teacher Jürgen Rooste says that teaching is often a daily struggle for students' attention, but some encounters and moments also give a great deal of energy.
Rooste began working at Tabasalu High School five years ago, when the school opened in 2021. Standing in front of a class is often stressful for him.
"It's a daily fight. When you walk to the front of the class as a teacher, every day is a battle or a war. Some days you come home broken and worn out. That's 90 percent of the days. And then there are some days that are great and give you energy," he said.
According to Rooste, one of a teacher's biggest tasks is to spark interest in students and make them notice what is happening in class. He says literature is not inherently interesting for young people, and teachers must work hard to make it so.
"You face the fact that you have to fight for every moment just to get them to notice anything at all. Some sense of interest or excitement is broken. Literature as such simply isn't interesting. To make literature interesting, you have to fight enormously."
He noted that a teacher must be both demanding and able to find ways to spark curiosity. His own deep love of literature does not mean students automatically share it.
"I'm not the best teacher just because I love literature. I want everyone to be fans of literature, of these texts and things like I am, but of course it doesn't work that way," he admitted.
For teachers, fighting for students' attention has become an everyday issue. This includes phone use. One option, he says, is a rule that phones are not used at all in class unless needed for learning. But that also means the teacher takes responsibility onto themselves.
"If one teacher alone starts banning phones — saying that in my class you can't use them — then there's always the chance you take the hit yourself. I have that option, that choice, but I haven't taken it," he said.
Rooste teaches in upper secondary school, and he believes students at that level should be more capable of being present in their studies. Now he sees attitudes in high school that he previously associated more with basic school.
"I remember that high‑school classes were already a transition phase — they wanted to be more adult, they wanted to be a bit present and show it, not that every moment they could chat with a friend, they would."
Reading checks have not disappeared from his classes. Students can do them with the book and their own notes. The teacher cannot fully control the use of artificial intelligence in note‑taking. "At least it has been digested in some secondary or tertiary form," he said.
When choosing works, he gives students a list of options but also experiments with reading different texts side by side. His literature program also includes younger Estonian authors.
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Editor: Karmen Rebane, Argo Ideon
