Achieving Student Engagement
I would like to share some thoughts about and a process that my school is going through to improve student engagement. We all know that to maximize a student’s learning potential, the student must be engaged in the teaching and learning process. It seems that so much of what is happening in schools is either based on old models that are obsolete or so constrained that it doesn’t build thoughtful, responsible young people. Education cannot be about memorizing answers and pleasing the teacher, but must be about critical thinking, collaborative work, and knowing what questions to ask. Learning must be about connecting real world experience to core subject matter.
We, as a teaching staff, are making a concerted effort to provide outstanding instruction to our students. Recently, we asked our students three questions and had small group discussions with all students. Those three questions are: 1. Why do students disengage? 2. How do we improve student engagement? and 3. What can students do to improve engagement?
As a teaching staff, we discussed the student responses and found four common themes as to how students are best engaged: 1. Students learn best from Passionate and Energetic teachers; 2. Students learn best from teachers that are Prepared and Creative; Students learn best when the material is Relevant to them; and 4. Students learn best when they best when they believe the teacher genuinely Cares about them.
Next, when we get back from Winter Break we are going to have all the students to discuss what they can do to improve their own engagement. Those discussion items will then be coded into themes for action points of the students.
Our goal through this process is to unlock every student’s and teacher’s potential to maximize their performance.
Byron's Babbles 
[…] Achieving Student Engagement « Byron's Babbles I would like to share some thoughts about and a process that my school is going through to improve student engagement. We all know that to maximize a student's learning potential, the student must be engaged in the … Source: byronernest.wordpress.com […]
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[…] I would like to share some thoughts about and a process that my school is going through to improve student engagement. We all know that to maximize a student's learning potential, the student must … […]
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