Engagement is a Tool, not a Goal

I was scrolling through Twitter and found this tweet.  Before I clicked on the video to watch it, the title put me off.  "What message is this guy sending to students?" I thought, "that they have to be entertained for learning to be valuable?"  I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I thought maybe he means something different by the word engaging.  Maybe he means engaging in a way I might agree with (like valuable or interesting), so I clicked on the video and realized why Tom Bennet had commented that it looked exhausting.  Tom was right.  This video is an ad for the guy's professional development seminars, and it is filled with teachers in training, doing a lot of energetic dances at the instruction of the trainer.  There is not a single moment (at least as portrayed in this ad) where anyone has a chance to sit and reflect on what they have learned.  They may be energized; they may be having fun (although I imagine the introverts among us would be miserable).  I'm not sure they are learning.  I'm not sure what they will take back to their classrooms that would add anything other than motion.

This causes me to ask the following question.  What's the sweet spot?  Where is the line between fun for the sake of fun (which is fine for recreation) and fun that actually enhances learning (which is what I want if I am going to spend class time on it)?  Are there times when having students dance while learning might be useful?  The research is clear that some movement while learning is good.  But, where is it just movement for the sake of movement?  I fear that is happening because well-meaning teachers hear "Movement is good" at a conference and don't take the time to find the nuances of what kind of movement is good and whether it should be connected to content.  

So, let me start by exploring what we mean by the word "engaging." I did a quick google search and found the first definition was "occupy, attract, or involve someone's interest or attention."  I'm on board with that.  I want to have my students' attention and interest.  Next question.  What do I want them to pay attention to?  What do I want them to be interested in?  The answer should obviously be "the thing I want them to learn."  I can put on a good show without teaching them a dang thing, and that is the opposite of what I want.

If you follow me on social media or have read a few blog posts, then I hope you know I am not in favor of boring students to death and just telling them to deal with it.  I believe strongly in involving students in their own learning and teaching with appropriate hands-on activities and technologies.  I assign projects to deepen learning in a way that my talking in class might not achieve.  But, teachers, please hear me - We must be intentional to choose activities that engage students in learning, not just in class.  When I tell my students about the time my cat ran up a tree and would not come back down, it is a little bit to get them to view me as a real person, but it is mostly to give them a visual image of gravitational potential energy transforming into kinetic energy so that when I give them similar problems to work on, I can say, "It like the cat in the tree," giving them something to connect to.  The seeming aside of that story doesn't just engage them in hearing a silly story; it has an educational payoff.   I show a lot of short videos in my class, often those that demonstrate things I cannot, but I have very few that last a full class period.  When I do show one of those, it isn't just because it's fun and engaging to watch videos (otherwise I would show them Marvel movies).  It's because the videos I have carefully chosen give them a view of something more effectively than I can.  For example, Steven Johnson's How We Got to Now: Glass shows students how their lives would be very different today without mirrors, lenses, phone screens, fiber optics, etc. and they leave with a different view of a seemingly mundane thing.  When I take kids into the lab to electrolyze salt water, I am aware that it is not going to involve fire or explosions or other things they might find more engaging, but I also know it is the most valuable lab we do because I refer back to it during the bonding chapter, the solutions chapter, and the electricity chapter (and tangentially in the acid/base chapter).  I have chosen it because while it is less engaging than another lab might be, it has more academic value.  When I blow something up, it is to demonstrate pressure and Boyle's law or synthesis reactions, not just to blow something up.  Are those things engaging?  You better believe it.  But what makes them valuable is the lead-up to and the reflection after the explosion.

We cannot out-entertain their phones, and we should stop trying.  It doesn't make us engaging; it highlights how lame we are compared to the entertainment industry.  I like to think I'm a pretty entertaining speaker, but they aren't going to choose me over Disney or Batman.  They have a budget that allows them to be immersive, but it is more than just that.  The end goal of the entertainment industry is, not surprisingly, entertainment.  Ours is learning.  For us, engagement is a means, not an end.  Learning is the end.  We're educators who use entertainment, not entertainers who might teach you something along the way.

As you lesson plan, choose activities that engage students in the thing you are trying to teach, but don't waste time on dancing and jumping around and taking laps around the room if they don't connect in some way to what you are teaching (that's possible, by the way, if you plan it well - I have a "States of Matter Dance").  Ask yourself how it will benefit your students, and if the answer is engagement with no objective or learning words after that, choose something else.  Engagement is a tool, not a goal.