Pub. 4 2014-2015 Issue 1

21 tising an invention from the 1920’s, they draw upon their innate talents. Besides becoming engaged in their project, they become proud of their work and learning. Choice As teachers, we don’t like being told every little thing we have to do! We enjoy the choices we have within our classrooms, and our students appreciate that sense of freedom, too. Choice is a powerful motivator. We can capitalize upon this by letting students make decisions and selections about their learning. It can be as easy as allow- ing them to pick their own groups sometimes or it could be giving them 5 different book report options. By giving them the power to choose, we allow them to find things that they find interesting and make them their own. Classroom Do we expect our students to be engaged and interested if they are sitting in a dull concrete classroom? No! Part of getting our students interested is to have an interesting classroom. Make it colorful. Have unique wall hangings. Put up students work—they love to see that their work is good enough to be used as classroom decoration! Beyond the aesthetics, it is even more important to have a safe classroom—an environment that is physically and emo- tionally safe. Students who have been shamed or belittled by other students or a teacher will not effectively take part in class. Your classroom should be a safe space, a place where they can learn and grow, where they can take risks, knowing that they will be supported by a community of learners. Care Sometimes getting students engaged and interested in your class is as simple as letting them know you truly care about them as a student. We all know that isn’t always as simple as it sounds! Especially those difficult kids--you know the ones I’m talking about! Aren’t they the ones who need us the most? I believe most teachers go into education because they care about the students. Being at charter schools, with smaller populations and smaller class sizes, I feel like we have an even greater opportunity to get to know our students well. We should know their names, we should know about their lives, and we should know their learning perspectives and needs. We can show them we care by smiling at them, saying hello to them in the halls, praising them, encouraging them, giving them writ- ten feedback, and letting them know how much we enjoy our jobs because of them. Our students should know that we care if they are in class or not, that we worry when they miss school, and that we are concerned when they are struggling in class. As the adage goes, “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Will they remember your lesson on carrots or will they remember that you cared? (Hopefully both!) Connections If a student believes that something is relevant or impor- tant to them, they are much more likely to remain engaged in the activity. It is our job to help students make personal connections to the lesson, content, and learning. We need to show them how it relates to their lives, their goals, and their future. We are often asked, “why do I have to learn this?” or “why does this matter?” We should be prepared to answer that by showing them how to connect what they’re learning to their lives beyond the school walls. We should create authentic tasks that will help them in their lives, jobs, or relationships. We can relate historical events from the past to current events going on in the news today, we can have meaningful service projects, do authentic research, or even teach them how using fractions can help when baking cookies. Helping students connect is one of the greatest ways to increase engagement because stu- dents are motivated to discover how and why these topics should matter to them. These are just a few tools teachers can use to increase student engagement. Just like anything teaching-related, some methods will work for some students, others will work for others. Don’t be discouraged if 100% of your students aren’t engaged 100% of the time. As John Lyd- gate once said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. And so it goes in the classroom! We can spend hours planning a perfectly engaging and interactive lesson, just to have one student say, “This is boring.” Do not be upset! There will always be some students who would prefer to stay in their seat while you pour knowledge into their mind, but there are many more students who will remember your lesson because they were fully involved. As we make a concerted effort to have more captivating classes and to be more engaged ourselves, the commitment will be recipro- cal and students will be encouraged to give more and do more in class. We should look for opportunities to pique students’ curiosity and invite them to solve mysteries associated with our content, encouraging them to investigate and inquire.