Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 149: Light Bulb Moments: Creating Relevant Learning Experiences

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Ep 149: Light Bulb Moments: Creating Relevant Learning Experiences · New Teacher Talk

Hello, and welcome to New Teacher Talk,
where we bring you essential conversations and tips to
support aspiring and early career teachers.
Whether you teach in a big city, a small town,
or anywhere in between,
we're here to help you succeed in your classroom.
My name is Byron Earnest and I'm the founder of Leadership
Global,
a professional service firm that provides support and
leadership development for schools.
I'm a former agriculture science teacher, principal,
superintendent and presently serve on the Indiana Board of
Education.
Today I'm going to talk about focusing on student
engagement and teaching using a relevant context.
It is just common sense that the more students are engaged,
the more they will see that for the relevance of their
experience, feel connected to their school experiences,
and develop more positive attitudes and attributes.
Learning in a relevant context is also a critical part to
student engagement.
I know I was that student in the back of the room who would
have his hand up wanting to know why I was learning some
particular subject.
Tree engagement happens when students discover that
learning is a personal endeavor.
Learning can only become personal when it is in a context
that connects the learning to the students' real life.
In other words, as I always say,
schoolwork must be like and look like real work.
For example,
you might use pumpkins this fall for learning numbers,
number cents, and counting for kindergarteners.
It doesn't have to be elaborate.
It just needs to be personal and real for the students.
For high school students,
we need them solving real world problems and issues.
For example,
I was just in a school where the students were planning a
community garden.
They're using almost every core subject to put the plan
together.
They're doing the math for the areas, the seed populations,
and how much area they need for the amount of people who
have told them they're interested.
They've needed business and marketing to actually market
these gardens.
They've needed their ELA classes in order to begin to write
up articles about this or letters to people telling them
about the potential with this.
Additionally,
I've now worked with a school here in Indiana that has a
sole focus of teaching students in the context of soccer.
Think about if you're an interested student and an athlete
of soccer and you can learn all of your subjects around
soccer.
That's very real to those students.
The possibilities are endless for engaging students in a
context is relevant to the world in which they live.
I know for me,
one of my fondest memories was from teaching welding when
we would do projects like ramps, for example,
and if you think about a ramp it's it's basically a
triangle, a right triangle.
And we were always building those for someone who needed
those ramps and I would usually only give them the
measurements for two sides of that triangle or ramp.
And they would come to me and want to know where the third
one was.
And I said, well,
don't you have a way of figuring that since that's a right
triangle.
It didn't take them very long to come back with that.
Gosh,
that was the Pythagorean theorem and then they would always
say things like,
so that's why we learned that or that's why we learned
geometry.
That's that real world relevance that I believe is so very
important.
And those are super fun light bulbs to have come on in the
students.
As we continue to think about making learning relevant for
students,
we need to remember What is changing for the student of
today.
There is a broadening of skills needed for high value
careers, a quickening pace of skill dynamism.
And a rerouting of pathways to economic and social
mobility.
Also,
we need to keep in mind that to have our students ready for
the future of work that First technology won't be the only
big changer skill mixing or what is now being called a
hybrid genome is going to be important.
In other words,
Students need to have a multiple set of skills in their
toolbox students will no longer needs those single skills
students can't just have skills in abstract.
core skills cannot be agnostic.
We can't just be learning math for the sake of math.
We can't just be learning our language arts just for the
sake of that.
We need to be learning them in some relevant way.
When students make the connection from true engagement,
they begin to understand the lessons and tasks are
worthwhile because they help them meet personal goals they
have begun to set for not just the teacher's goal for them.
Engagement and relevancy enable students to own their own
learning.
One of the activities that I have teachers do during
professional developments that I do is to develop their own
definition for student engagement and relevancy.
I would encourage you to pause this podcast right now and
create your own definition of student engagement and
relevancy to make a quick draft that you can continue to
iterate later.
I hope you created your own definition of student
engagement and relevancy.
I want me to share my own definition of engagement and
relevancy that I used when I was teaching.
Students learn best from passionate and energetic teachers
who are prepared and creative.
Students learn best when the material is relevant to the
world they live in and students learn best when they
believe the teacher genuinely cares about them.
Now that was my own personal definition of engagement and
relevancy but you should have your own personal definition
and there aren't any definite right or wrongs here.
It's that you need to have really thought intentionally
about what that relevancy engagement looked like for
students.
After creating that definition I have teachers culminate
their work by developing a graphic recording of their
definitions.
Some of the key points I have seen them put on graphics
that I want you to consider are connections, collaboration,
engaging manipulatives, higher level questions,
having students teach students, problem solving,
student choice, agency and learning, differentiation,
and including interests of the students.
If you think about all of those,
those are really big things that our students need.
They need those connections and collaborations.
They need us to have engaging activities for them and we
need to be thinking about those activities being higher
level and really making the students again think about real
issues, real problems that are out there.
Don't forget the power of students working as groups or
teams and then student agency is so important for me.
When you can let students choose what they're doing and
what maybe those projects are or have some choices that is
very important to engaging students and will really help
them be interested.
Think about yourself.
If you get to have some say in what you're doing you become
much more interested in that.
Here's the deal.
If we want students to be engaged we must have students
working in teams to experience and explore relevant real
world problems, questions, issues, and challenges.
Then have them create presentations and products to share
what they have learned.
Student motivation comes from lessons facilitated,
utilizing, and encouraging student creativity, innovation,
and problem solving.
Again,
I wish you the best of luck as you begin your teaching
career.
It is so fun.
I am so excited for you for what you're endeavoring.
I remember those first few years very vividly.
Yes, there was a lot of work.
Yes,
there were stressful moments but oh the places we can go
when we're doing that teaching and when we're helping our
students become all that they can be.
Thanks for spending part of your day with us on New Teacher
Talk.
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