When I walk into a classroom, I can tell within one minute whether or not students are learning.
The teacher might be in the front of the classroom, or it may take me a few seconds to find him or her. The lesson might be on higher-level mathematics, the causes of the U.S. Civil War, or the differences between active and passive verbs. Regardless of the subject matter or age of the students, in a good lesson the students are engaged in their learning.
When students are engaged, they often don't notice me as I enter their class. Their noses could be burrowed in books or affixed to screens. They might be working in teams to erect Greek temples from construction paper or record reactions when chemicals are mixed. Possibly they are painting, practicing speeches, or staging a play. Whatever the task, students who are engaged are focused on learning. They aren't learning so they can pass a test or achieve a high grade—although engaged students perform better. They're learning because the content or activity feels relevant and interesting, and they're achieving success in whatever they're doing. Those three factors come together to create student engagement.
Engagement doesn't happen by chance. It happens when talented teachers help students understand the importance of what they're learning and why it's relevant to them. It happens when teachers have students work in ways that spark interest, with students actively constructing meaning, often working in teams and learning from mistakes. It happens when instruction is differentiated so everyone can succeed—and when success comes with an expectation to stretch beyond your comfort zone.
When relevance, high interest, and success are in place, students want to learn. They invest more energy and are more resilient in their learning. The classroom becomes a place of inquiry, active learning, and collaboration; even when learning is difficult, it can be joyful. Such engagement is obvious to anyone who enters a classroom.
Helping Teachers Value Engagement
As principals, we have two tasks connected to student engagement: First, we must help our teachers see the value of this engagement, and we must give them the autonomy and resources to create it in their classrooms. That's not easy. It can be hard for teachers to appreciate the value of engaging classrooms and to understand the components of such classrooms. Often, teachers feel tied to a set curriculum, and they're uncomfortable with allowing students to collaborate with one another or giving them autonomy to choose how they want to learn.
One way to help teachers see the importance of engagement is to ask them how they learn best. Usually, they'll mention relevance, interest, and success (even if they don't use those exact terms). Then, ask whether they think those elements might help students learn, too, and discuss what should happen in classrooms so students can also experience active, joyful learning.
Ensuring Teachers Are Engaged
Our second task is to make sure that our teachers are also engaged in their learning. Too often principals focus only on student learning—and that's an oversight. Of course, the purpose of school is for students to learn, but students' learning will be constrained unless their teachers are also learning. And, like students, teachers learn best when they are engaged.
So we should ask whether our professional development efforts, teacher evaluations, and goal-setting processes are leading to engaged faculty learning, using the criteria of relevance, interest, and success. How relevant are our PD efforts to what our teachers want and need? Do teachers see the merit in what they're doing? Have we shared with teachers the rationale of this year's PD plan and solicited their input? It's easier to embrace a plan if you were involved in creating it.
Because administrators should model what we want teachers to do, we should present the professional development content in an interesting, learner-friendly way. Faculty meetings should be learning meetings. Information about housekeeping matters can be distributed earlier so that meetings can be interactive events in which teachers trade ideas, find new ways to meet students' needs, solve problems together, and generally learn from one another. And we need to make sure there's time for teachers to have fun.
It shouldn't be a high bar, but our faculty meetings should be so engaging that teachers want to attend them. For example, once I asked teachers to share during our meeting how they created the "joyful learning" mentioned in our mission statement. Teachers got so engaged in the discussions that I had difficulty getting everyone to stop talking. I've also asked teachers to share what strategies worked for them in teaching students who struggle.
Principals also need to help teachers succeed. We do this by differentiating—on the basis of teachers' levels of expertise and their interests—what we look for as we observe and evaluate teachers and the goals we expect them to set. We should ask ourselves questions like, How can we design teacher observations and evaluations so that successes evolve into challenges? After our teachers succeed, we want them to look for different, higher goals to pursue. How might a new teacher set and pursue professional goals differently than a seasoned veteran? Can teams of teachers pursuing similar goals share ideas and feedback throughout the year?
If teachers are engaged in their learning, their classrooms will be places where students achieve, push themselves, and experience joyful learning. How engaged is your faculty?
