Engage Me or Enrage Me

I absolutely LOVED this article. I identify with what the author is saying because I have worked a non-profit agency wherein I taught in after school and summer programs. As a person who has worked with kids for the past three years and has taught curriculum for the past two, I immediately agreed with the "three kinds of students" described in the beginning of the reading. When I was in grade school, I was the "number 2" type of student who went through the motions because it was what I had to do. Most of the students I have taught over the past two years have been the "number 3" type. They demand to be engaged immediately upon entering the class and expect to be continuously engaged throughout the entire period. The moment they are not engaged, they will exhibit all types of negative behavior. The task of engaging these students is seemingly impossible sometimes.

The article provided great insights on why it has been hard for me to engage them. He points to the fact that they have all kinds of gadgets and gizmos that they bring to school, and that they find those things more interesting than what a teacher has to say. Also, they perform tasks in video games and Pokemon/Yugiyo cards that are really hard, and they enjoy doing so. Therefore the "old style" no longer works because kids these days have more things in their daily lives which are constantly engaging them. Often, I feel as though I work extremely hard to prepare special lessons, bring props, make the material relevant, and be exciting in my delivery of information all to be shut down by my students. There are two exerpts in the reading that jump out of the screen at me with regard to this. "In my view, it's not about 'relevence' that's lacking for this generation, it's engagement. What's the relevence of Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh, or American Idol? (p. 3)" This struck me, because I was always of the belief that if you make material relevant to the students' lives, then they will pay attention and want to learn. However, I have had instances where I taught very relevant things to students with little success. The other sentence that stood out was in the very next paragraph where the author writes: "The fact is that even if you are the most engaging old-style teacher in the world, you are not going to capture most of our students the old way." This is so true because felt like all the efforts I made would have really engaged me when I was my students' age. However, most of my lessons were just engaging in the old way.

With that being said, however, it is a challenge in inner-city schools which may not have access to certain technologies. I know that in the programs I have worked in, we were lucky to get enough "traditional school supplies" for all our students let alone 21st century technology. Therefore, how do we engage students in environments such as these?