Time

This thing all things devours;

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats mountain down.

You may recognize the riddle above. It is one in a series of riddles
asked between Bilbo and Gollum in one of my favorite books, The Hobbit.
In this case, the answer to the riddle is, “time.” I find that time itself is
one of life’s biggest riddles. Many would argue that it is our most precious
resource since it can never be recaptured. How we view time has a huge
impact on our attitudes, relationships, and daily interactions. Philip
Zimbardo, a psychologist and thought-influencer, has done some great
work around this topic. How our students and staff view the world, and their
orientation to the future, impacts how they engage with us. Take a look at
this video for a deeper dig into the idea of time orientation:

The Secret Power of Time

One could argue that finding a way to grow our students from
present-oriented hedonists, to future-oriented people, is the key to their
success... and ours!

What specific actions do you take to help our learners orient to the future? 

The Power of Fun

“Make learning fun!” How many times as an educator have you said or heard this quote?  Countless times I am sure. The reality is that human behavior can be shifted in a positive way when we make things fun. Check out this two minute video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&sns=em

As I watched the video, I was reminded of three simple things that we can do to engage our learners by making it fun.

Novelty - In low risk situations, like climbing a set of musical stairs, human nature drives us to experience things we have yet to experience.

Immediate feedback - Learners like to see the impact of their actions.  Every step here is rewarded by a note. Rewarding our learners with immediate feedback drives engagement.

Social connection - One of the simplest ways to make a lesson more fun is to let our learners work together.  Making meaning together is inherently more fun than doing it alone.

To see more videos like the one above, check out http://www.thefuntheory.com/

How do you leverage fun to engage your learners?

Mark

The Story I Told Myself

I once had the privilege of attending an 8th grade field trip to our district's STEAM center. As a science teacher of 13 years, it was good to be surrounded by engaging activities connected to my favorite content! I bounced around from activity to activity and watched my students learning by doing. One activity involved using K’NEX to create a variety of structures.

I strolled into the room about 10 minutes into the session and noticed a student sitting alone at the table, not building the model. This young man is full of personality when you interact with him one-on-one, but is not a strong student. It is not uncommon for me to see him just sitting in class, not doing his work. I know that he is a past STAAR failure and was retained in elementary school. I also know about his home situation that is not something I would wish on anyone. Despite knowing all this, when I saw him just sitting there, a story began to form. In my mind, I believed that he was just choosing not to engage. I thought he was just being lazy. I sat next to him with the intent to tell him how disappointed I was that he was not respecting the opportunity he was being given. When I asked why he wasn’t building, he said, “I don’t know how.” This seemed unrealistic and I told him just to look at the picture and make it look like that. I watched as he struggled to connect the pieces. At that point I gathered up pieces and began to build. He watched intently and within a minute, he was going. I watched his momentum build after his “aha” moment. We continued building together. I asked him if he had ever had Duplos or Legos as a kid. He said that he had not. I am ashamed of the story I told myself about this young man. Some might think that he should be grateful that I cared enough to sit next to him and help. The reality is that the biggest learning that happened that day was on my part. This young man taught the principal to beware of the assumptions we make about why students disengage. It is a lesson that I won’t soon forget!

What are your go-to questions that you ask of students when they appear to be disengaged?