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“One of the goals of education is not simply to fill students with facts and information but to help them learn how to learn.”
― Zaretta L. Hammond, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students
Tips for Student Engagement
Tips for Student Engagement
Tip #1: Don't confuse compliance with engagement.
Tip #1: Don't confuse compliance with engagement.
Remember that there are three levels of student engagement (Jimmerson, 2003), and the goal is always to hit cognitive engagement.
Behavioral Engagement: Students are compliant with rules and instructions.
Emotional Engagement: Students are actually invested in what they are learning. They’re enjoying it and valuing it--though they may not be learning exactly what we want them to learn.
Cognitive Engagement: Students’ minds are actually thinking about and processing the task at-hand.
If we settle for behavioral engagement, we deny both ourselves and our students the joy that learning can be...not to mention, students are less likely to learn if they're not enjoying what they're doing.
Read more here!
Tip #2: Think of students As clients and Lessons as Products.
Tip #2: Think of students As clients and Lessons as Products.
Gone are the days when students had no choice but to listen to the teacher to gain necessary information. Whether we like it or not, teachers compete with so many other sources of both information and entertainment. To combat the information that's coming at them from all directions, students' brains naturally filter out anything that doesn't seem INTERESTING or IMPORTANT. This is a feature, not a bug!
So, as teachers, it's our job to find out: What do students find interesting? What do they find important?
Consider using a Design Thinking approach. This involves conducting empathy interviews with young people, creating lesson prototypes, testing them, and then tweaking them based upon specific student feedback. Read more about how real schools have done that here.
BONUS: Check out some of these engaging lessons templates!
Tip #3: Involve Students Directly in Creating & Reviewing Curriculum.
Tip #3: Involve Students Directly in Creating & Reviewing Curriculum.
Every school district has brilliant students who will one day be our future doctors, astrophysicists, business entrepreneurs, and creative geniuses. Capture that brilliance now by inviting students to help create or review curriculum. In Hampton City Schools, we used grant funds to pay students $19/hour (to start!) to systematically review or create curriculum. Read more about how to start a program like this in your own district or check out the presentation to the right.
Tip #4: Look outside Education (Especially at Entertainment Industries).
Tip #4: Look outside Education (Especially at Entertainment Industries).
I love a good educational conference, but I also love checking out new and different experiences. You never when you're going to get a great idea from another industry! For instance, when I was the Director of Innovation, we were having trouble getting teachers to come to optional PD on cool digital learning experiences OR to let us go into their classrooms to work with them and their students. At the same time, I was trying to sign up a group of friends for a Spa Weekend using a scheduling app, browsing the list of services and trying to figure out a time that would work for our schedules. That's when it hit me: instead of asking teachers individual to individual...why not come up with a list of "lesson services" with specific available times, and then market them to teachers as a valuable, limited-time commodity? We went from 0 co-taught lessons per month to 40. Best of all: we were teaching the teachers how to use the technology while we were there! See examples of the lesson advertisements here.
On my weekends, I'm also always look to test out new games or events. My family and I go to Escape Rooms about once a month; it's fun and I get all kinds of ideas for new lessons! When my 15yo or 8yo are into new video games, I ask them to show me why they love the video game, and try to figure out how to incorporate that into lessons. I'm forever dragging my husband to murder mystery dinners or immersive theater experiences. In addition to education conferences, go to Board Game or other entertainment-related conferences! For the first year of our virtual school, we did a series of PDs with a former educator who now runs his own D&D company to learn more about how to implement simulations and role plays in the classroom.
I've compiled other ideas for how to come up with awesome, engaging lessons here.
Lastly, check out the Next Generation Storytellers project, where we literally bring the entertainment industry to K-12 education!
Tip #5: Remember (AND BELIEVE!) THAT THe Key to Success is to Fail Faster.
Tip #5: Remember (AND BELIEVE!) THAT THe Key to Success is to Fail Faster.
In Hampton City Schools, I once proposed that for our district-wide PD (which includes 30 schools), we do a virtual escape room with all teachers. My boss at the time raised his eyebrow and said, "Good luck with that," but he let me try it. And guess what? It was a disaster!
What I actually mean is: the first time with the first school was a distaster. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never created a virtual escape room and I'd only been to one in-person escape room. BUT, after the first school, we tweaked the game. We tweaked it again after the second school, and again and again until by the last 10 schools, teachers were saying it was their favorite PD ever and wondering why we didn't do more PDs like that.
Similarly, when our schools shut down during 2020, I immediately got on Outschool, an Amazon-style marketplace for online lessons, to start testing out online lessons. I wasn't used to teaching virtually at that time, and boy did I learn a lot from parent feedback (they get to rate you after every lesson). And, because parents were PAYING for these lessons, they expected the lessons to be high quality. As educators, we're too often used to students as a captive audience. I learned that after every lesson, I needed to ask students what they liked and how I could make it better. By the time I had to stop teaching courses due to time constraints, I had some students literally crying that they could no longer do the Percy Jackson book study/role-play games I'd created with their input.
So, whatever you decide to do with student engagement: don't be afraid to try new things. And if they don't work, don't be afraid to get honest feedback, tweak them, and try, try again until you find that magic combination that works!
For more examples of awesome, tested and tweaked lessons, check out the immersive adventure page!
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