Student Engagement: 412 Weekly Writing #3

Professor: "What do we (agricultural educators) teach?" 
Pre-service Ag. Teachers: "Animal science, mechanics, plant science, food science, environmental science, leadership skills, communication skills, agribusiness, marketing, record-keeping, natural resources, agriscience, applied STEM, technical knowledge and skills...."
Professor: "Yes..but no that's wrong."
Pre-service Ag. Teachers: "......huh?......."
Professor: "All of the above is our content. But we teach Students..."

The above conversation is a paraphrase of how my cohort started one of our pre-service teaching classes this past week. The question was set-up to be a trick, and once we were told the correct answer we all realized where the focus of classes this week was moving towards. We all know that our main purpose is to educate students and make an impact on them, but sometimes now when we're bustling about trying to make sure we are ready for this next year, we run the risk of getting bogged down worrying about the content that we are teaching instead of who we are teaching.

Student engagement and motivation are key topics in the classroom. We could walk into our classrooms this spring with the best written lesson plans around, but if we don't engage our students, and we can hear crickets chirping in the background, we are going to have a problem (unless of course you have reptiles in your classroom who you are feeding crickets to, in which case in might be normal to hear crickets chirping). But the point is - if your students are not motivated to be in your classroom, and don't feel engaged, then they are not going to be engaged in your agricultural program, and there is no program without students. We (teachers) cannot make an impact on the future if our present students don't want to engage with us.


There are many ways to keep your students engaged and motivated in your classroom. Rewards systems, music, games, physical movement - these are all good ways that we can keep our students engaged and motivated, but a great quote I found explains it perfectly - "not every student learns the same way, the same day" (thanks Google!), and this is true! There are so many different types of learners and so many different types of learning - but no matter what way you learn, in order to reach all your learners you have to mix it up and add a little Variability every lesson to effectively teach. Worksheets and powerpoint lectures may be a great way to deliver content, but they are never the only way and they should always be used with another more engaging activity to complement it.

Interest approaches are the main way we gain and measure student engagement. These are activities, at the beginning of a class/lesson, which tie in a student's interest with the topic/content to be learned that day. For example, when teaching an environmental science class you may take your students on a short nature walk, in a food science class you may bring in a food for the students to eat. For me, horse references always pique my interest. In order to best find an interest approach that will engage your students you have to know two things: 1) what kind of learners are they, and 2) what are they interested in. The second point is probably the easiest one to find out - you have to care about your students and get to know them as people. It doesn't have to involve checking out their after school activities or attending their sports events (though it can, and a lot of ag. teachers are very involved in their students' lives), it can be as simple as listening to student conversations during breaks, or better yet, assign an open-ended assignment where students can write an essay or complete a project on a topic of their choosing and see what they interested in.

Students are always trying to tell their story, you just have to know when and how to listen...

My Multiple Intelligences Results

The first part is a little harder, learning what kind of learners your students are. With three modalities of learning (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic), three domains of learning (cognitive, psychomotor, and affective), and multiple intelligences, it's hard to figure out especially since some learners may not even know how they learn best. To help figure this out there are many different online tests you and/or your students can take to determine your individual learning styles. A test my cohort and I took this past week determined our Multiples Intelligences, using the following link: www.bgfl.org/

Once you know what your students are interested in, and how they best learn, then you can plan the appropriate interest approaches and other activities to ensure that your classroom is filled with engaged and motivated students. There are many ways to do this and some ways include utilizing movement, summarizing strategies, cooperative learning techniques, and more. This link, and the picture to the right, show seven ways that have been found to increase student engagement in classrooms: www.readinghorizons.com/blog/seven-ways-to-increase-student-engagement-in-the-classroom


At the end of the day you have to remember that not only do your students have to be engaged and motivated in your classroom in order to learn, but you have to also remain and engaged and motivated to show up and give your best everyday, because you never know when might be the day that your students are going to get it. So always remember that no one is ever motivated to go into a classroom where they are bored, or where their teacher is bored, but if you stay engaged in your students' learning and in them, then they will stay engaged in your teaching and you.