Student Engagement

1306 Words3 Pages

Student Engagement

Instead of teaching us how to do projects and essays, how to use the quadratic formula, how to understand the concept of war, teach us instead the art of persuasion. Teach us the ways of entertaining an audience, the dilemmas that the world faces. Teach us that there are an enormous amount of issues in the world and they come with an abundant amount of solutions. To learn how to engage an audience is to learn how to teach one.

Getting people, especially kids interested in school is the one and only thing that no one has quite figured out yet. If you teach on a project based learning curriculum you take the risk of having kids fall into a lazy slump. If you teach primarily with textbooks and lectures, you run the risk of kids skipping and falling asleep. Is there truly a way of keeping kids entertained while teaching them the necessities? A study done in Lincoln, Nebraska by Laura Parn states “As teachers, we are getting so busy and burdened with the federal, state, and district requirements that we forget to think about the emotional needs of our students. It is not common that we have time to stop and think about what our students want or desire, but according to Damico and Roth (1994), it is necessary for the success and engagement of our pupils”. This proves that the challenges in the educational system need to be seen and acted upon by higher ups before public schools can even think about making a difference. That really does make things exceedingly difficult because we all know how long it takes federal higher ups to make decisions. Laura also says that teachers tend to forget about the emotional needs of students. Which is very unfortunate because when a teacher helps you with a math problem, or eve...

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...her ups, and then once their ideas of education update, so can school systems, then teachers themselves. Maiers “Keys to Student Engagement” shows the raw potential that school systems already have. It also shows that students need the drive and ambition to succeed. Tristan’s article on edutopia provides ideas that are already in motion. His ideas and tips have already started to work in public high school in his community. With the guidance and vision of these three authors public school issues could cease to exist. Even though there’s a lot involved getting administrators (and some teachers) on board, it is possible, and in the near future, a reality.

Works Cited

http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning-teaching-strategies

http://www.angelamaiers.com/2008/04/engagement-alph.html

http://scimath.unl.edu/MIM/files/research/ParnL.pdf

http://21stcenturyskills.org/

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