When classroom engagement is lacking, the answer lies within.
In the best of times, teachers often get frustrated attempting to engage with their students. We are not living in the best of times, and distance learning brings a whole new host of frustrations. Engaging every student is extremely important and can be extremely difficult especially when students are learning from their bedrooms. So if you are struggling getting your kids to engage in your physical or virtual classroom, I am here to (unfortunately) say that it is you, not them.
If you are still reading, I am sorry to break it to you like that. Children, at their core, are extremely curious. In their early years, they are information sponges and are learning about the world around them at a rapid pace. As they approach and enter puberty, they are no less curious, but the walls that they begin to put up makes it more difficult to engage them. While they advance into their teen years, their curiosity shifts and the desire to understand why the world is the way it is begins to come forward, sometimes in spite of their teenage apathy.
They are ready to learn, so why are not ready to learn from you? It’s simple; you haven’t found the right way to do it, yet. There are two things to consider, content and delivery method. We can agree that some of the content that we teach is not terribly exciting; teaching it in a way that engages students is not easy. Teachers often find ways to tie their content into typical student interests, sports, video games, popular culture, careers, etc. That works more than not, but some topics cannot be translated easily to these topics. Never forget that children are curious, it doesn’t have to be framed in a way that interests then, it has to be framed in a way that sparks their curiosity. Why do we need to learn this? How does this impact the world around you? Frame it in a way that gets them thinking.
Delivery method is extremely important, especially in the world of distance learning. I was recently part of a virtual English class of high school freshmen, and the teacher was asking high interest, opinion based questions and was getting absolutely no responses. In talking to the teacher afterwards the frustration was evident and our conversation eventually moved from the frustration to understanding what we just saw. The students are not ready to learn in this format. Instead of viewing that lack of engagement as evidence, they teacher instead blamed the students and was planning to push even harder the next period. The students will show us with their engagement what works and what doesn’t. The teacher ultimately shifted and employed more interactive methods (like Nearpod and smaller groups) and found a much higher level of engagement.
Children want to learn, even when they do not outwardly show us that, it is part of their development. Children will also show us how they want to learn, and unfortunately we often gather this information through failure. It is our job as teachers to not only teach the content, but find the best way to deliver that content. So, the next time your class falls flat, in spite of your best intentions, take that as evidence that you need to alter your methods. It is frustrating, but it is less frustrating than ignoring the signs continuing down the same path with the same results.