Engagement vs. Entertainment

“Engagement” or “Entertainment” do you know the difference? Engagement is the educational buzzword of the moment.  Even students know that teachers are “supposed to engage” them. One of my Careers Class students expressed his displeasure, arms folded across chest, slouching on his 13th vertebra, and made the snide comment that he was “not engaged”. (See - they know the jargon.) The problem was that he wasn’t looking to be engaged; he was looking to be entertained. He, like many students (and often their parents) don’t know the difference.

What is “engagement” exactly? Well, if you simply look the word up you’ll find definitions of marital engagement, and military engagement (not really what you have in mind for your child). You really need to narrow it down to “intellectual engagement,” which is generally defined as the “enjoyment of demanding intellectual activity” (italics, mine). My favorite definition of teaching for engagement came from the teaching program at Utah Valley University. How do they define “engaged learning” through UVU’s curriculum? Well, they say it “teaches the how and why in conjunction with the what and who. At UVU, learning is accompanied by doing, which leads to becoming.” What???

Translating “edu-speak” into Standard American English, I came up with: Teaching for engagement challenges the student to seek out the answers to questions of “how” and “why” in addition to the “what” and “who” of a topic. This search goes hand-in-hand with challenging activities, and rewards students for delving deeply into subject matter. This process develops skill and judgment in students, and produces competent, educated, problem-solving adults. It also requires students to take risks, invest time and energy, reflect on outcomes, and work through failure.

So, does my glaring, slouching student look or sound like he wants to be challenged, to take risks, to invest time and energy? Of course not, he’s passively waiting to be entertained, and to be given a passing grade for showing up.

How did we come to confuse engagement with entertainment, and to insist that teachers perform like marionettes, bouncing around the classroom, mouthing scripts prepared by others?

There is a very lucrative market of “in-service programs”, as they are called. (I’ve been known to call them teacher detention.) They’re paid with your federal and state tax dollars. These programs are designed and led by people who may be former teachers, counselors or coaches, some with advanced degrees who peddle programs to help “fix” teaching practices in order to “enhance student performance” on standardized tests - for a substantial fee. Often these program providers are connected to politically influential people within the district. The programs are “one-size-fits-all” and therefore cannot guarantee ALL children in the average 25-student classroom will learn to a proficient level. In fact, with inclusion mandates, these programs guarantee that several will actually learn less. (An “inclusion mandate” simply means that students of all levels, including students just learning English and students with learning disabilities, are included in each classroom.)

Let me give you an example. An in-service program is presented that is designed to fix the problem of “bored students with limited attention spans”. It advises teachers to be “edu-tainers” and to switch up activities every 15-20 minutes (including having the students move around) to keep students “engaged.”  This kind of program is a disaster for a child with an autism spectrum disorder who needs structure and consistency. It is merely disruptive and frustrating for students with developmental delays, or the ones still struggling with English. These students, who have just figured out what they’re supposed to do, or are mid-way through the task, are told it’s time to stop and move on. Worse, implementing this kind of a program on a high school level, or even a middle school level, pretty much guarantees that students will not develop the self-discipline to read or write for extended periods of time, or the tenacity to work through complex problems required for life, work, college, SATs or even for those minimal-proficiency standardized tests mandated by No Child Left Behind. It also negates the fact that great teachers, like great leaders, come with different personalities and different skill strengths, and that not all are “song and dance” performers. Let’s face it, teachers who aren’t true to themselves, or whose "performance" rings phony to students, are not going to be successful.

In-service programs are an integral part of the PIPs “professional improvement programs” mandated for teachers by most states. Often, we sit through programs that conflict in ideology and practice, not only with each another, but also with practices mandated within the district by the local Board of Education. Mostly, these very expensive programs, which take teachers out of the classroom, give cover to administrators and BOEs – who can then say, “see, look at all the training we provide, look at all the paperwork and statistics we’ve compiled, look at the money we’ve invested.” In truth, most programs are one-shot, feel-good programs made of smoke and mirrors. Experienced teachers know how to pick and choose through the materials, and sift out elements that might work in specific situations. New teachers, often in over-their-heads, may latch on to a program and use it for every class, then become frustrated when it “doesn’t work.”

Administrators and politicians have misled parents. Some mislead knowingly - to protect financial interests, and others have been flummoxed by meaningless statistics and faulty group-think. Parents need to understand that administrators and politicians (and some teachers) want to hear praise, and they get downright ornery if questioned, or worse, criticized. If they can’t get praise, then what they really want is QUIET. The quickest and most lucrative way to do that is to balance minimally acceptable standardized test scores, with students and parents happy with the “work effort/achievement” to “grade” ratio. Parents in particular assume that an A means excellent achievement, but they need to realize that their children are not going to complain if they receive an A or B without really learning anything.  It may sound cynical, but there is a benefit for administrators and politicians in keeping parents clueless on how little their children have learned, and in keeping their lower socio-economic constituents dependent on, and unquestioning of, their policies and programs. It makes it much easier for politicians to stay in power when the general population so willingly falls for a convenient scapegoat – like… teachers.

If you look at affluent public school districts and private schools, they don’t waste their money on quick-fix programs. They focus on AP classes, enrichment classes, labs and SAT preparation. Even in low socio-economic districts, there is a divide between immigrant children and American-born. I have had numerous conversations with students who are either foreign-born or 1st generation American; they’ll say that many of their classmates are “lazy.” They have been taught by necessity to work through frustration, to spend additional time and effort practicing a skill until they are not merely competent, but highly proficient. One young man said he hated Math in middle school. He complained it was too difficult, but his parents made him work through problem after problem, and ask for additional work from his teacher. Now that he’s at the top of the class, he finds Math “fun.” That “fun” will open-up opportunities for this student. He will be ready for college, not only because he will have high level Math and Science classes on his transcript, but because he has learned how to triumph over his frustration, and work through it to success.

 I hope that parents will make the effort to find out what “A” work represents, especially if their child is performing poorly in just one class. It could be that the student has a weakness in one area that needs to be addressed, but parents also need to be aware that there are teachers that give out As and Bs on demand because it is just easier; easier than facing the wrath of students, parents and administrators, or the increased paperwork involved in giving a D or F to a student. Sometimes it is because teachers are threatened if they don’t make a parent happy by passing a student. This is especially true of new teachers who have not yet earned tenure.

I want parents to equate engagement with challenge, and claims of “boredom” with a wish for diversion or entertainment. I expect parents to encourage their children, if they are truly bored, to ask for more challenging activities, and to review their work before allowing their child to submit it. I want parents to challenge administrators to provide access to more labs, more complex problem-solving activities. I want them to demand flexibility in course progression (so that a student capable of Algebra II isn’t stuck taking Algebra I because that is what is on the schedule for 9^th graders), and demand that higher-level courses, even college classes are offered at the local high school to provide a map to success and accomplishment.

Students are savvy about the pressures put on teachers and the scorn heaped on them by administrators, politicians and the public at large. My scowling sloucher was one of a little posse of students who informed me that I couldn’t fail “all of them” because they refused to turn in their career research projects. I want parents to be savvy, too. They must refuse to enable the practices that limit their child’s future, and to hold politicians, administrators, their children and themselves equally as responsible as they do teachers.

Oh, what happened to my little posse? A few holdouts failed, but my sloucher and the others rushed to submit work (with penalties) and managed to squeak out Ds. Hopefully, next semester will be better.