"The person who does the work is the ONLY one who learns." -Harry Wong, The First Days of School
I was asked over the summer, “When walking into a classroom what does student engagement look like?”
For a lot of years engagement was synonymous with compliance. Students sat stiffly with hands folded in front of them, silent as they kept their attention on the teacher...the sage. If you were a student who survived this manner of instruction chances are you are also well aware that this level of compliance really only meant that a handful of students were actually engaging with the content. If you were anything like me...you were travelling to far flung locales in your head.
So then what is engagement? What does it look like? If we want to know whether a student is engaging with the content that is set before them there are really only two ways to make that thinking visible: they have to say something...or they have to do something.
So when walking into any classroom in order to determine if students are engaged...I look at what the students are being asked to do. What is out on their desk? What are they saying? And perhaps most importantly….who is doing the heavy lifting?
I wandered into a classroom recently where a teacher was leading the students in recording all the countries and their capitals on a blank map of South America. The teacher pointed out the location. The students copied. The teacher told them the name of the capital. The students copied. When the teacher got up to answer a call from the school office the students hurriedly began finding maps at the back of planners or texts in their desks and attempted to get a number of the countries written in while their teacher was distracted. Others waited chin in hand for the answers. Still others began to act out. The teacher completed her call and became annoyed with those who were misbehaving and reprimanded those who had found other maps telling them that they were not told to pull out other research material.
It begs the question: Who gained the most from this exercise? The teacher who aptly demonstrated her own knowledge or the students who were admonished to do nothing more than copy.
I am a strong believer in there is a time and a place for everything...there is a time and a place for following along, and recording a teacher model. In this instance however the students clearly understood how to use research materials effectively. Copying off of a world map isn’t exactly heavy lifting either...but the students were ready to take ownership of creating their own maps. They could have been done faster doing this on their own than following the teacher lead rotely. From there subsequent lessons could follow...where are the major rivers on this continent? How might that impact trade?
My own son came home from school a few years ago and commented that his view of school is that “Teachers see us as little vases to be filled.” At the time he was 13. The statement startled me, and clearly I haven’t forgotten it. Is that engagement? What systems do we put in place so that our students are forced to do the heavy lifting? Or are we asking them to sit still while we fill them with our knowledge?
If we consistently do the lifting for them...should we be surprised when they act out? Should we be surprised when they can’t problem solve for themselves? Should we be surprised when they tune us out?
I was asked over the summer, “When walking into a classroom what does student engagement look like?”
For a lot of years engagement was synonymous with compliance. Students sat stiffly with hands folded in front of them, silent as they kept their attention on the teacher...the sage. If you were a student who survived this manner of instruction chances are you are also well aware that this level of compliance really only meant that a handful of students were actually engaging with the content. If you were anything like me...you were travelling to far flung locales in your head.
So then what is engagement? What does it look like? If we want to know whether a student is engaging with the content that is set before them there are really only two ways to make that thinking visible: they have to say something...or they have to do something.
So when walking into any classroom in order to determine if students are engaged...I look at what the students are being asked to do. What is out on their desk? What are they saying? And perhaps most importantly….who is doing the heavy lifting?
I wandered into a classroom recently where a teacher was leading the students in recording all the countries and their capitals on a blank map of South America. The teacher pointed out the location. The students copied. The teacher told them the name of the capital. The students copied. When the teacher got up to answer a call from the school office the students hurriedly began finding maps at the back of planners or texts in their desks and attempted to get a number of the countries written in while their teacher was distracted. Others waited chin in hand for the answers. Still others began to act out. The teacher completed her call and became annoyed with those who were misbehaving and reprimanded those who had found other maps telling them that they were not told to pull out other research material.
It begs the question: Who gained the most from this exercise? The teacher who aptly demonstrated her own knowledge or the students who were admonished to do nothing more than copy.
I am a strong believer in there is a time and a place for everything...there is a time and a place for following along, and recording a teacher model. In this instance however the students clearly understood how to use research materials effectively. Copying off of a world map isn’t exactly heavy lifting either...but the students were ready to take ownership of creating their own maps. They could have been done faster doing this on their own than following the teacher lead rotely. From there subsequent lessons could follow...where are the major rivers on this continent? How might that impact trade?
My own son came home from school a few years ago and commented that his view of school is that “Teachers see us as little vases to be filled.” At the time he was 13. The statement startled me, and clearly I haven’t forgotten it. Is that engagement? What systems do we put in place so that our students are forced to do the heavy lifting? Or are we asking them to sit still while we fill them with our knowledge?
If we consistently do the lifting for them...should we be surprised when they act out? Should we be surprised when they can’t problem solve for themselves? Should we be surprised when they tune us out?