How to Engage Students Effectively

There is a saying which you may have heard: "when the student is ready to learn, the teacher is ready to teach." (I may have forgotten its exact wording)

My purpose in showing you this quote is this: Not all students are ready (and willing) to learn. Sometimes it takes a great deal of effort on your part to engage those students. This can gone on for days and weeks without any sign of encouragement. It may not even appear to you that they are learning, but trust me, they are.

In their own way.

Let me show you what I mean: I had a seventh grade student once who hardly did any work - all semester long. He was at elementary school reading level. At the teacher's meetings, nobody thought he could pull himself up. He received failing grades all the way through.

He was also a major discipline problem. He created havoc in my lessons; he was almost impossible to engage in the beginning and he hated English.

When I learned of his difficult emotional background in our first tutorial, I was able to build somewhat of a connection. This was my first step to engaging him.

He wouldn't participate in any of the lessons initially, but showed signs of progress when I gave him a worksheet to complete in our tutorial.

During our tutorials, I used these worksheets to help him create a portfolio. He showcased his work and passed my class. He was able to read words more phonically and finally agreed to work with a tutor. My next step was to engage him in more complicated learning tasks such as understanding the meaning of words.

Many teachers didn't see a need to even pass this student, and a few couldn't understand why I sat with this student after school.

As you can see, a teacher's journey is also a human one. We have to be in order to build a connection. Students need encouragement and they want to build a connection.

For this week, try and find a way to engage your student(s) beyond the curriculum. You may need to experiment with an activity that you feel comfortable with.

Here are a few examples of engaging activities on a broad curriculum level:

• Discuss a topic that is meaningful based on what your students what to know.

• Encourage students to choose a topic that interests them for their presentations, performance tasks, projects, etc. This has important implication for nurturing their motivation.

And here are a few examples on a teacher-student level:

• Conduct student-teacher tutorials

• Encourage self-reflection wherever possible. You can use sentence stems or direct questioning such as:

One successful activity I learned this week was ___________________________________________________

• Provide a behavior modification chart. (Please email me for an example.)

Are you beginning to see where I am going?

These little things have BIG implications. Already, students will feel a sense of belonging in your classroom which is important for engaging them for learning activities.

And don't forget, you can take charge in the classroom!