Student Engagement: Why Are We Learning This?
I've had some questions both here on the blog and in my classroom about the challenge of getting and keeping students engaged. Rigid discipline and strong armed guidance have been mentioned as a possible necessity, given middle schoolers who may be behind in reading and writing skills. While this seems like an inevitability to many teachers, I don't believe that it's necessary.
It is my unequivocal contention that children will not only learn, but they will be eager and willing to learn regardless of their background, socioeconomic status or academic level. However, what is needed to make this happen is a complete shift in the way educators present their material. If school and education are presented from the outset as a service to the student rather than an obligation they must fulfill to "succeed," there is no need to coerce or keep students in line. Let me explain.
If I, as an English teacher, greet my students on the first day of class with a lecture on how important it is that they learn the curriculum and do well on their tests in order to pass the class and go to the next grade and graduate, I have already lost most of my students, except those few who are innately competitive and/or under tremendous pressure to succeed from parents. Even those students will be much more excited and eager to learn if I present the whole matter differently.
If instead, I talk about why English is necessary for students in their own life, why grammar and poetry and fluid prose are essential for their own progress, how being able to communicate effectively can make the difference between getting that guy or girl or that job or that position on the team, then my students no longer see it as a chore but as a valuable tool.
The same goes for a History teacher. Reeling off a list of dates and important events and emphasizing the need to memorize those dry and distant facts can hardly be considered effective in engaging students, however much those facts are exciting and essential to the teacher. If instead, that teacher focuses for a moment on the purpose of history, on the incredible insight it offers to where all of us as human beings have traveled, have learned, have grown, the mistakes we've made, the wars we've fought, the tragedies we've survived and the heroism we have witnessed, then he or she makes the subject come alive for their students. Again, the crucial step is to connect that living subject to the lives and interests and purpose of our students. Why should students care about the human saga? How will it serve them directly? If we take the trouble to explain how history can help us learn from past mistakes without having to make them ourselves, gain a perspective on the various cultures and religions and ethnicities we encounter in our lives, understand the political and economic processes that govern whether or not we prosper, then which student wouldn't want to equip themselves with this knowledge?
Each subject has fundamental value in improving our lives directly, whether it's math to figure out what we should be paid or should be paying, or science to figure out how the world works and how we can impact it, or music or art to learn self expression or p.e. to understand teamwork and cooperation. Sometimes as content teachers we become so wrapped up in knowledge for knowledge's sake that we forget this fact. Yet, it is the single most important fact we can impart to our students, the importance of our subject in directly improving their lives. If we can effectively answer the question "Why are we doing this?" with such an explanation rather than "because its on the test" then engagement will never be an issue.
Students, Teachers, and Know-it-Alls
I came home furious the other day after class. It infuriates me when student teachers, who have barely entered a classroom, profess to already know everything there is to know about reaching and teaching their students. I never lecture to my students, encouraging instead a sharing of ideas and a willingness to be open to new ways of thinking. But there are those who resist even that kind of interaction, who are completely closed off to learning. I’ve been teaching for over a decade now, first as a high school teacher, then as a university professor and I still barely know what I’m doing. How can these college students assume they know it all? How will they deal with the reality of teaching students who could care less what they know? But then, after a cup of tea, I calm down and remember how long it took me to realize I didn’t know much. When I first started out teaching high school, I thought I was the one with the knowledge and that I would distribute that precious knowledge to my eager students. Little did I know what lessons I had yet to learn from those very students.
I muddled through my first years of teaching, confident that I was the expert and that my students needed to just listen to me and they would succeed. After all, I had a Ph.D. in English. I was baffled by their resistance but kept plowing ahead on my own. It was in the South Bronx, in one of the worst schools in terms of violence, poverty and drug use among students, that I finally realized what I was doing wrong. One day out of sheer frustration I asked them what they did care about, because it certainly wasn’t Greek mythology. They responded with a litany of their troubles, their challenges, the incredible hardship in their own lives. I told them to forget about writing an essay on the Odyssey. I asked them to write about their own lives and their own stories. The results were miraculous.
Once I stepped off my pedestal and allowed them a voice, my students blossomed. They wrote and filled volumes with their writing. They responded to each other’s stories with profound discussions and deep reflections. They read authors who spoke to their own experience. Every day was a chance to learn from each other. I believe I learned more than anyone else in that room. No longer was I the expert. No longer was I the sole holder of knowledge. Once I recognized their funds of knowledge, their street literacies and their rich experience, we became co-learners in the truest sense.
Finally, by giving up some of my own power and acknowledging theirs, I became truly powerful. I was able to guide the discussions, to help them articulate what they wanted to say, to lead them to deeper reflection through questioning and challenging their thought process. It was amazing and so rewarding. Together, my students and I created our own vision of the world and how we wanted it to be. Together, we created a space of learning and sharing and personal growth.
In all societies throughout history the teacher has been accorded a prominent place. He is bearer of wisdom, guide and mentor. But if you look closely at the most revered teachers, such as Christ, Buddha, Mohammed and Krishna, you find that they did not sit on a pedestal and hand out wisdom. They lived among their disciples, sharing thoughts, working beside them, fighting battles, experiencing pain and suffering, begging for alms. They encouraged discussion, pushed their disciples to think independently and to become powerful agents of change. If they had not, their teachings would never have survived, for their students continued to spread those teachings long after the teacher disappeared. Because they had co-learned those philosophies, adapting them to the reality of their time and place, they were able to create their own vision through the ages and keep those precepts alive.
We are all teachers to someone, whether our children, our employees, our patients, our friends, and we are also students who continue to learn until the very end of our lives. Perhaps in my eagerness to share my hard gained experience with my student teachers, I am becoming didactic. It is important to remember in both roles that we need to be open to those around us, to never feel we know all there is to know, and to be humble enough to acknowledge the wisdom of those we seek to teach, as well as those from whom we seek to learn.