Middle school teacher and blogger Heather Wolpert-Gawron recently posted an piece about student engagement on Edutopia. She asked all of her students (220 in total!), "What engages students?" She got some great responses that she sorted into 10 groups that you can read here.
This was such a great question to ask middle school kids. I can't say I was surprised by their responses, and I don't think most people will be. This post got me thinking about the whole issue of engagement. To me, this is the key to learning anything. If we don't care about what is happening, we don't participate, and don't learn. This is especially true today when it is so easy to be distracted by technology and the sheer volume and velocity of information that comes at us all day long. Before the information age, the teacher delivered the information. We understood that we kind of had to tolerate the boredom and monotony that went along with school in order to get the necessary info. Today, this is not the case. Kids (and adults) can get information and instruction from many places other than the teacher or school. They know this and demand that schools become value-added places where they can engage in a way that may not be possible at home. The real importance of school has transformed into a social context that frames the information that comes from a variety of places. This shift happened quickly, when we weren't really paying attention to it. We are now at a point when we have no choice. Our kids simply will not tolerate monotony or boredom. If we want digital natives to learn, we must engage them and facilitate their learning. Any teacher who believes she is still the purveyor of information and doesn't have an obligation to draw kids into impassioned interactions with new ideas and concepts, will surely fail.
This was such a great question to ask middle school kids. I can't say I was surprised by their responses, and I don't think most people will be. This post got me thinking about the whole issue of engagement. To me, this is the key to learning anything. If we don't care about what is happening, we don't participate, and don't learn. This is especially true today when it is so easy to be distracted by technology and the sheer volume and velocity of information that comes at us all day long. Before the information age, the teacher delivered the information. We understood that we kind of had to tolerate the boredom and monotony that went along with school in order to get the necessary info. Today, this is not the case. Kids (and adults) can get information and instruction from many places other than the teacher or school. They know this and demand that schools become value-added places where they can engage in a way that may not be possible at home. The real importance of school has transformed into a social context that frames the information that comes from a variety of places. This shift happened quickly, when we weren't really paying attention to it. We are now at a point when we have no choice. Our kids simply will not tolerate monotony or boredom. If we want digital natives to learn, we must engage them and facilitate their learning. Any teacher who believes she is still the purveyor of information and doesn't have an obligation to draw kids into impassioned interactions with new ideas and concepts, will surely fail.
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