Have you ever looked out over your class and seen every eye on you, but you swear, nothing is going on inside? You ask a question, and hear crickets. You ask them to be creative and free with a project, but every project comes in looking just like the example. My worst day as an orchestra teacher is the day that a piece completely falls apart, and none of the students even know that they’re off-beat.
How is it that a class can be so well-behaved, but yet so disengaged? It turns out that in our attempt to control the outward signs of engagement—eyes on me, mouths quiet, iPads closed—we may have controlled our students out of true engagement.
Teachers and students, particularly secondary students, are in a constant dance. Teachers want to mold, shape and guide students. We want students to get the right answers. We want them to make decisions that set them on the right path. Students want to develop independence. They want choice over what they do and when. But, they still want to feel that they can fall back on adults when they make mistakes or get in over their heads. They want to know that it’s safe to share their ideas. When one of us pushes too far in this dance, problems in our relationship arise. On the surface the class looks engaged, but what you really find is that students are not willing to do the work of learning.
Without autonomy, we don’t have engagement
Engagement and compliance look similar, but have very different outcomes. Compliant students look focused, are not talking, and are doing the assignment they were given. However, their effort may be just enough to squeak by. Students who are engaged are thinking deeply and are experiencing productive struggle. They demonstrate curiosity and a passion for learning. In order for people to be willing to take on a productive struggle, the right circumstances have to exist. They need to be presented with a learning gap to hook their attention. They need to know that they will have the ability to close that learning gap. And, finally, they need to feel that they have control over their learning situation.
Too much freedom=sugar rush
No parent in their right mind would let their child call all of the shots. Given their free will, what child wouldn’t live on a diet of macaroni and cheese and Lucky Charms? Nobody is arguing for this in the classroom either. Although adolescents are developing their own society in the school with their own social rules, they don’t have the maturity to set limits or to treat others fairly all of the time. In an environment without enough adult intervention, they will be preoccupied with establishing their own norms and their own leadership, to the detriment of learning.
Too much control=crickets
However, setting too many limits tells our children that we don’t trust them to make decisions. Kids who have been brought up in school this way are the kids who come up to ask us for help for every step of a process, just to make sure they have it right. I’ll never forget the student who walked up to me to ask what he should write on his name tag. They’re terrified to make a mistake, for fear of losing our respect. They’re terrified to take a chance and think for themselves.
As anyone who’s ever babysat my two children will tell you, the more I try to hurry them, the slower they get. I swear, you couldn’t find two slower kids on the planet if you tried! I can’t yell or punish my way to them getting ready on time. They have to want to move. On the other hand, if they know book time is waiting for them once they’re ready for bed, they’re suddenly superhero fast!
The same could be said about our classrooms. The more we try to force our way to engagement, the more the lights go out. There is no way to reward or punish your way to an engaged class. We can’t regulate or measure engagement. We have to set it up by designing lessons with great hooks and by building autonomy.
Keeping a positive balance
The small choices we make in the classroom and our interactions with individuals shape our students’ beliefs about whether they are able to think on their own. We are either lighting their fire of curiosity, or dousing it. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ever set limits or assign one-size-fits-all assignments. We just need to balance these limits with autonomy-building actions. Each action will either build autonomy in our learners, or will withdraw it. In order to maintain an engaged class, we need to stay balanced toward the autonomous side.
Just as we avoid one-size-fits-all work in our classrooms, there is no one answer for every teacher. We have to find a balance that works for us. For every classroom, with all of our students’ different learning needs and dynamics, there will be a different balance. From day to day, students might have more autonomy or less. What we need to decide individually is how we can bank enough autonomy in order to pay for the limits we need to set. In this way, we make sure that we’re headed toward our long-term goal of building creative, engaged, and connected learners.
Thinking slow. Acting fast. 