When you try to pin down exactly what an engaged student looks like it is extremely difficult. They can and should look different, because they are different. For example, when my students write lyrics they’re spread out all over my classroom. Some students work in chairs, some lying on the floor, some under desks. Sometimes it gets so quiet you could hear a pin drop, until it erupts in voices sharing their latest line. Even when that is happening and everything looks good there is still one more thing I think about…

Compliance vs. Engagement

When I’m engaged in something I can work on it for hours. My students are the same way. Of course there are some days that I know I can’t turn my back on a certain student because I know they will stop working and do something else. That child isn’t engaged. When I’m looking at him he is being compliant with what I want him to do. If I were to leave the classroom that compliance would crumble; he hasn’t bought in. When this happens I step back and really look at how I’m teaching a concept. Can the kids own it more? Can they have more control? Usually in my room that is when the engagement piece comes in.

I know that my students are engaged when I feel like I could leave for the day and they would keep working until it was time to go home. Engagement is not dependent on whether there is a teacher in the room. I know my students were engaged when they come back the next day and stop me in the hall saying “Hey! I worked more on my song last night. I emailed it to you!” That is engagement. Engagement is not waiting for the confines of school to fit their learning schedule.

We need to help students learn how to be engaged in productive learning because they don’t get to have a teacher in their back pocket in 13th (or maybe 17th) grade. Eventually they will grow up, get a job, and not have someone there to tell them what to do next.

How often does engagement happen?

I would say that in my room about 85% of my students are engaged and about 30% continue to be engaged when they go home. Normally, 100% of my students are being compliant but that’s not really the thing I’m striving for. I want my students to be so excited about what we’re doing that they can’t help to work on it at home. When I was in school I sat in 5th grade math class drawing full scale maps of James Bond for N64, fantasizing about the level I couldn’t quite beat the night before. I want my students to go home drawing full scale maps of the problems they couldn’t quite solve in school and then come back with answers and more questions.