A recent post by Dave Sherman on Leader Talk hit close to home for me. I have been struggling with my middle school son as I see him disengage more and more daily. He has great teachers, but he struggles to stay motivated and excited about learning.
As a parent and an educator, this both kills and angers me. There are very specific conditions that promote engagement in our schools and classrooms, yet the conversations about teaching and learning continue to be about the content we are teaching and not enough about the students learning that content.
In an effort to PUT LEARNING FIRST, these questions have become the cornerstone of my teaching:
- What motivates me to learn?
- What MUST I have (conditions of learning) in order for my learning to be successful?
- What causes me to pay attention, even if the topic I am studying is not my favorite?
- What guarantees boredom, disengagement, and shut down for me?
- How can a create,replicate those conditions in my classroom?
Dave reflects on a similar learning experience with his MS daughter describing the process of writing the dreaded research paper:
The students will go through the motions of looking up information on a topic that has no real meaning in their lives, and then regurgitating the information back to the teacher in a report that must be written in a format prescribed by the teacher . Knowing this teacher, I can accurately predict that she will mark up the final draft with a red pen (which my child will not pay any attention to), and the teacher will assign a grade which will weigh heavily in the child’s final trimester grade.
He writes:
True authentic learning will engage all learners because the topics will be real for them. The academically gifted student, the artist, the mechanically inclined child, and the highly dramatic kid all can find success in a problem-based environment in which they are expected to work together and use their individual strengths to solve real problems.
Read more in his post, What really engages All Students?
So, what is the answer? Is there are cure for the disengagement disease(for teachers and students)? His Leader Talk, colleague, Kelly,at Educational Discourse thinks so. And, I concur!
He writes:
It was clear that students want to learn and know that learning is important. Their biggest issue was that at times what they were doing didn’t seem relevant. It wasn’t that they wanted things to be always “today’s headlines” kind of stuff but they wanted to be able to find connections between what they were doing and what was going on around them. If it was detached or just some facts about things, they found it hard to follow or care about. They wanted to be involved in things that were going on in their lives and were linked to their world.
Don’t we all need this in our work in order to engage?
Kelly suggests four characteristics of effective and progressive schools:
- Relevant Curriculum
- Transitioning
- Connections
- Engaging
What say you? How do you address engagement, or lack there of in the work you do?
Related Posts-
How to Get Respect From Our Students?
Kids Ask Teachers..21st Century Please
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