Learning about Student Engagement from Teens
Over dinner one evening, I asked my teenage children what engages them in a class. We should ask questions like this more often—young people can offer us valuable professional insights if we let them!
Here are five teen tips for student engagement:
1. Let students puzzle through things together without interjecting the answers. What a simple idea, right? We all want to build our students’ capacity to work through problems, analyze situations and information, and, ultimately, we want them to function as scholar-thinkers. Nevertheless, letting students puzzle through things independently takes time, and it takes courage on the part of the teacher. It can be difficult to listen to the messy process as students puzzle through wrong answers and misunderstanding. We can feel impatient with the process and anxious to cover all of our content. Meaningfully interjecting to guide and scaffold students’ learning is very different than simply delivering content. Developing these skills takes deliberate work and practicing them involves risk and vulnerability. The payoff, however, is deeper learning, higher student engagement, better retention, and the development of students’ critical thinking and executive function skills.
2. Pose open-ended questions. I find, in talking with my teens, that little is more frustrating than teacher questions posed exclusively to fish for a specific answer. Likely we have all been in this situation on one side or the other. “The author is trying to ______” may be clear in our own heads—"the author is trying to persuade the reader” or “the author is trying to describe what it was like to live in Victorian England”…. Such questioning, however, can feel to students more like a mindreading/ guessing game as they offer potential “right” answers with the hope that they hit on the teacher’s right answer. Genuinely open-ended questions, on the other hand, require deeper thinking about content, support making connections to prior knowledge and experience, and can spark insights and conversation within the class as a body of learners.
3. Use your language to define a reality of interest and engagement. Described as the “anticipatory principle” in Appreciative Inquiry**, we tend to move in the direction of our anticipated future. The more positive the vision, the more positive the present. As the teacher, we set the vision and tone for our students. If a teacher communicates or accepts that students do not like school, do not like homework, do not like their class… they have articulated something that, like it or not, will probably be realized. Acknowledging the struggle required to get to “the good stuff”, on the other hand, communicates a positive, realistic vision of learning. Seek to empathize a way that shines forward and does not inadvertently drag the learners down.
4. Admit you do not have all the answers. Students appreciate honesty, and seeing teachers as thinkers and learners models lifelong habits. My teens love teachers who are comfortable with “that’s an interesting question” or “let’s see if we can find out.”
5. Embed something random into a slide presentation. This tip from my daughter made me laugh out loud! Her examples—a little character on the side of the slide that gets bigger as the presentation continues. Elements of surprise, even if they seem gimmicky, can wake students up, inject a little humor and levity, and serve as a check-in and reset. Playfulness is engaging.
We can learn a lot from young people if we let ourselves ask questions and listen, including how to grow as an effective educator. Do you have a random cute puppy slide in today’s lesson?
**Learn more about Appreciative Inquiry here.