I’ve been following the many different comments on student engagement–mulling over what it is that sparks those levels of engagement that we hope to promote or elicit from our students or ourselves. I’m working on a P.D. session that will be given on Thursday and knowing my audience very well I realize that their general amiability and/or willingness to try or listen (at least a little) isn’t enough. I realize that as the facilitator of this session I’ve also got to find the right hook, provocative statement, background, activity that will ignite or rekindle the teachers’ own desire to find out more. Not an easy task as we all find ourselves in the midst (or pathway) of the steamroller we call school. It’s demands are unrelenting and at times crushing. (attended a colleague’s funeral today)
Bonita asked about some of Jensen’s engagement strategies: one of the huge takeaways for me was understanding how teachers can exploit state-change and use it effectively. It requires a high level of energy from the teacher and the ability to precisely read one’s audience to do it effectively. We have several teachers who have mastered that art, however, and they consistently blow me away with their expertise–the students almost always rise to the occasion too and under most conditions perform far beyond what others may have expected of them. One doesn’t need to be quite as frenetic as what we saw in the second video (though I liked very much there) but it definitely requires teachers to become more “ear” than “mouth” I’ll add more to this later
