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EdSurge
The Key to Better Student Engagement Is Letting Them Show You How They Learn
By Jacquelyn Whiting
Feb 22, 2021
A couple of weeks ago during a coaching session, a middle school
teacher I work with described a fun math activity. She asked her
students who were learning remotely to build blanket forts. As you
might expect, the students calculated the area, perimeter and volumes
of their forts. What was surprising was that for days after this lesson
these students logged into class from inside their blanket sanctuaries.
Almost inadvertently, during a particularly trying time in their lives,
the students built learning environments over which they had agency.
More to the point, they were engaged.
A year into the pandemic, the instructional sands keep shifting from
in-person, to remote, to concurrent (or hybrid) and back again. And
almost every conversation I have with educators regardless of whether
they are classroom teachers, instructional specialists or
administrators is around student engagement. Sometimes these
conversations are with administrators concerned about the increasing
numbers of students on the school’s D-F list or with teachers
disconsolate about students who won’t turn on their cameras, turn in
work or participate in discussions and whose attendance (virtual or
in-person) is sporadic at best.
All of them are asking, with some urgency, about how we can boost
student engagement under these difficult and fluctuating circumstances.
From my vantage point, the causes and symptoms are multi-faceted. We
need to partner with students—individually and collectively—to discover
the root causes and empower them to be their own antidotes.
Performance Success
Well before the pandemic, researcher Amy Berry was examining student
engagement, and in the past few months TeachThought founder Terry Heick
has joined this conversation. Berry and Heick both offer continua of
student investment in learning from outright rebellion to the compliant
student “doing school” to the fully invested student with agency over
their learning and intrinsic motivation to pursue growth. That our
students are distributed across this continuum is not new; that so many
students now appear to have slipped into retreatism is what is so
concerning.
When considering students as individuals and trying to identify the
root causes of their perceived disengagement I find it useful to
consider the variables of performance success—knowledge, skills, an
environment conducive to learning and the motivation to learn. Missing
just one of these variables can have a profound impact on engagement.
In particular, when teachers are teaching and students are learning in
such varied and fluctuating settings, I am inclined to focus on the
impact of the learning environment on a student’s ability to engage.
That’s part of what made the blanket fort lesson such a success. Inside
the fort, students could tune out distractions and focus. They could
choose what to bring into their forts and what to share with everyone
who could see their video feed. Middle school students are navigating
the most vulnerable and self-conscious developmental phase. And by
forcing these students to keep their video cameras on we are compelling
them to let into their private spaces lots of people who would never be
granted access to those spaces otherwise. Seen through this lens, it
isn’t that surprising that they ordinarily are not active participants
in their learning these days.
Whether they are socially distanced, sitting behind transparent screens
in the classroom or home and tethered to a screen, the emotional
wellness of our students is rightfully our paramount concern.
Curriculum can be compacted. Learning gaps can be filled. But emotional
injury is harder to overcome. Investment in social-emotional learning
has taken on a new urgency, and through this work we can empower
students to understand their own unique impediments to engagement and
make that thinking visible to us.
Toward Visible Thinking
Unless we approach the development of social-emotional learning
competencies through an equity framework we not only are limited in how
much growth we can help our students realize, we risk compounding the
damage our students have already endured. CASEL is a recognized SEL
thought leader so let’s explore the competencies they have already
outlined: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness,
relationship skills and responsible decision-making.
When we nurture students’ self-awareness and ability to self-manage we
need to include examination of implicit biases and privilege in that
work. Students who are aware of the unconscious beliefs they have
developed and the opportunities from which they benefit—or do not
benefit—are able to develop racial and cultural literacy. Their
understanding of the historical legacies and institutional systems that
come to bear on their social awareness and relationships equip them to
amplify marginalized voices. The result of developing this self- and
social awareness means that students make responsible decisions in ways
that promote equity and opportunity.
Let’s return to the blanket forts and consider how the lesson can be
expanded to include opportunities for students to practice SEL skills.
Students could design their ideal, personalized learning space taking
into account their audio-visual, kinesthetic and other needs. They
could prototype their designs and present them live to the class or as
a submitted project for others to review, and then give each other
feedback on their concepts. Expand this exercise by challenging
students to research a community issue they could address. Perhaps they
design shelters for homeless youth or temporary shelters for families
in storm ravaged areas.
Beyond math—and non-fiction reading and social studies—students will
examine their own needs and biases and build empathy with people whose
lives and experiences are different from their own. In the process of
constructing, presenting and providing feedback on their designs the
students will practice understanding an audience and communicating
effectively and productively. Ultimately, students are making decisions
in the interest of equity, opportunity and informed action.
The more that our students become aware of their learning processes and
can make their thinking visible to us, the better we can nurture their
development. To that end, capturing their reflection is essential,
especially when students are remote and distributed. Here is a guide
students can use to collect evidence of their SEL growth (or mastery of
curricular learning targets) and explain the insight they are deriving
from that learning.
When students have agency over the path, pace, time and place of their
learning, they will invest in it. The more we all make our thinking
visible to each other, the better equipped we are to build strong,
equitable learning communities that can thrive in these fluid
educational circumstances.
Read this and other stories at EdSurge
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