All my fellow educators know the phrase “student engagement.” It comes from the Charlotte Danielson Rubric and is a part of The Framework for Teaching.
We teachers are evaluated on four key components, outlined in the evaluation rubric crafted by The Danielson Group:
Domain One: Planning & Preparation.
Domain Two: Learning Environments.
Domain Three: Learning Experiences.
And Domain Four: Principled Teaching (commonly referred to as professionalism).
Student engagement is found within domain three. Below is a bulleted list of how student engagement criteria might appear in a classroom:
In order for a student to be truly engaged, they must first feel inspired and then be held accountable to try.
Kids should absolutely find the tasks they are being asked to attempt interesting, challenging, valuable, worthwhile, connected, applicable to the real world, and maybe even a little bit, dare I say, fun.
Children should also be offered multiple on-ramps for understanding. If a child struggles initiating a task or shows confusion, they need scaffolds that bring them into the learning, which undoubtably takes some heavy lifting. This might look like a modification or support: a graphic organizer, a translation service, student choice whenever possible, or a small-group re-teach or pre-teach, just to name a few. But for a student to be engaged, they must do. They must feel safe to willingly and actively participate. If a child doesn’t feel safe to take risks, much reflection must be done on behalf of the teacher.
At the same time though, if children are not held accountable to participate in the learning at all, if they somehow get the message that participation is optional, this crushes the soul of the classroom.
Please hear me. I am not saying that if a child needs additional support to become engaged, it is solely on them to seek it out, or that this makes them somehow bad or unworthy. In fact, I am saying the opposite. The giving and taking of additional support is a cornerstone of any functional, healthy, thriving classroom. This is a collective responsibility between teacher and child.
However, if a child has been provided with all of the tools they need to become engaged and involved, including dynamic, challenging, and exciting lessons, rich, high-quality instruction and materials, and supportive, flexible, accommodating teachers, they need to hold up their part of the deal, get in there, and learn.
I have high behavioral standards in my room. I always have, even when I was brand new to the field. I’ve always taken student engagement very seriously. In my classroom, I want my students to be engaged at all times. By aiming for perfection, I may get close. I get these positive behavioral results through mutual respect and understanding and lots and lots of praise, redirection, and positive reinforcement.
However, what happens when a child has been given all the tools they might need, and still they are resisting engagement?
When I ask a child to try something, I mean what I say. I want them to try it. If they don’t get it right, that’s okay. But they have to try. If they don’t feel like attempting something, I might go further, asking them what about the task feels uncomfortable or daunting. Maybe this will show a gap in my own instruction. Or maybe it will inform me of something valuable about gaps in the child’s knowledge or motivation.
But as teachers, what happens when everything we do, all the work we put into making a lesson valuable, creative, engaging, challenging, differentiated, and intellectually stimulating… what happens when the child still doesn’t want to engage in the task or learning?
Before I close, it should be said that my biggest fear is somebody reading this piece and thinking: ugh, another teacher trying to scapegoat responsibility. Those teachers are all the same. It’s NEVER their fault.
To this I say, I am HIGHLY reflective in my professional practice. I am constantly trying to improve and continually ask myself the following question: what could I have done differently to better support and teach kids? But this topic of engagement and accountability has plagued me so much recently, that I simply had to get my thoughts down, even at the risk of a reader assuming that I’m somehow looking for a “student engagement scapegoat.” That I’m trying to place blame elsewhere. Because truly, I am not.
I am simply asking at what point, if ever, should a child be held accountable? And if the answer is never, then what are we really teaching them? How are we preparing them to be engaged and productive citizens?
I have no answer. I am simply putting these questions out into the universe.