Teachers, Students, and Engaged Learning
A Google search on student engagement offers about 77,100,000 results. It's an important topic for teachers, students, families, and the communities in which they live. Children can't learn when they're not paying attention. Excuses for 21st century students to be disengaged are as ridiculous as they are numerous. It's technology: attention spans are shorter because of the instantaneous nature of technology. This is the information age. If you can't say it in a sound bite, students won't listen. It's a relationship problem. Teachers don't care. It's assessment. Teachers don't have time to build relationships with students because they're too busy teaching to the test. The reasons for lack of student engagement actually don't matter and can be refuted as easily as they're invented.
Check out http://blog.ted.com/2013/12/16/the-first-school-in-the-cloud-opens/ for an interesting perspective on how technology can be leveraged not only to increase learning but engagement. The bottom line is that learning is about risk-taking. Situations in which most students are willing to take risks historically involved relationship with the teacher. When students feel safe, they will take risks in class and or with their teachers. Visit http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/firstyear/258http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/firstyear/258 for some interesting thoughts on risk taking in learning. There's an emerging and ever-present resource for risk-taking that's available to most American students in the 21st century: Technology. When I was a classroom teacher I set up students' assignments on a moodle. There I could post notes about learning, including videos and other internet links, in addition to posting quizzes and tests. The quizzes were available for students to take as many times as they like before "the test", and were filled with gateway questions that either rewarded correct responses or redirected incorrect responses with an explanation for why another response would be better. Students could take these as many times as they liked, without other students knowing, and without consequence to their grades.
The anonymity combined with access to experts that the internet facilitates provides unparalleled safety in learning in terms of numbers of students to whom it's available. I also had the great advantage of having excellent rapport and trust with each of my students. Even though I wasn't the best teacher, in fact I was always the youngest and least experienced teacher in my cohorts, my students regularly grew more academically than my peers'. I attribute their growth to the extent that the boys and girls in my classroom felt safer, could take more risks, and had more opportunities for practice than students in other classes.
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