This document discusses student engagement in three acts. Act 1 describes how some students lose motivation and engagement in reading between grades 3-4. It also shows how lack of engagement can lead to avoidance, loss of self-esteem, and lack of improvement. Act 2 reveals that engagement has dimensions including flow, compliance, and non-compliance. It asks how teachers can foster engagement. Act 3 suggests building schools around wonder and provocation rather than tasks. It discusses seeing students from a perspective of care, commitment to their potential, and not giving up on them.

1. Engagement
A Passion Story Told in Three Acts

2. Act 1
There’s a Problem?

6. We can choose to
work or not to work,
but if we don’t work,
she’ll hunt us down.
I could not come to
her class unprepared.
If I did, I felt like I let
her down. She
believed in my ability
to succeed; therefore,
I believed in myself.
Thank you! I never
had a teacher
believe in me this
much.

7. ENGAGEMENT

8. Engageme
nt
Academi
c
success

9. THE GAP BETWEEN LOW AND HIGH
PERFORMERS
The problem of inequality is becoming
more pronounced and more entrenched
decade by decade...a social time bomb.
--Michael Fullan

14. K-3 grade:
40% of students
read daily
4th grade:
29% read daily

15. I used to be a good
reader until around third
or fourth grade, then I
suddenly got stupider.
Smith and Wilhelm, 2002
Wilhelm and Smith

16. Do I value climbing this mountain?
Do I expect to make it?

18. NO, DON’T THINK I CAN DO
THIS!

19. Attempt
Failure
Frustration
Avoidance
Lack of
practice
No
improvement
Loss of self
esteem
Lack of
motivation

25. With a partner, ponder the quote.
“When lists of standards for school achievement are
made, nobody seems concerned that happiness is not
on the list. It would be easy to make the case for it,
though. Happy children are better learners… But the
omission points to a much larger problem. Children
live at least twelve years of their lives in school, and
their experiences influence every aspect of their
development and wellbeing– the intellectual, the
emotional, the psychological, and the social . While we
are busy teaching children to read and write, the
students are also trying to make sense of being
human. Pressures to focus on the ‘basics’ and
‘academic rigor’ often distract us, and we forget that
healthy development and well-being require children
to experience a sense of autonomy, relatedness, and
competence.
-Johnston, Peter and Gay Ivy, 2015. “Engagement: A Hub of Human
Development.” In Glover and Keene, The Teacher You Want to Be.

26. Act 2
Engagement Revealed

31. Dimensions
of
Engagement

43. FLOW

48. How Might a Student Respond to Tasks?

50. COMPLIANCE

54. NON-
COMPLIANCE

56. Rebellion

61. Act 3
Taking Action

70. What if we built a school system
designed around wonder?
We could begin, for instance, by seeing books themselves
as rich provocations, rather than as tasks or assignments
to be dispatched and completed, since every good book
invites its readers to consider what it might mean. And
since a provocation, by its very nature, is intended to
spark thinking along with both curiosity and puzzlement,
we might also want to reconsider some of the practices
we may implement when reading—such as doing a
picture walk, reading a back blurb, or providing a brief
summary or background knowledge for the text…

72. If I have to go to school,
then just give me busy
work. It’s easy and I can get
a good grade.

74. Wild animals domesticated: Moral?
Immoral? Neither?

75. Where does your right to
develop and express your
unique identify end and the
rights of others who would
object begin?

78. How does
discrimination
sneak into a
culture, and what
does it take to
weed it out?

79. [T]he goal of developing in most….
Rather than designing work for
students….
In America, we say….
Quotes by Phil Schlechty and Vicki
Vinton

80. Did you know:
Honey is the one food that does not
spoil. Archaeologists have tasted and
deemed edible three-thousand-year-
old honey found in the tombs of
Egyptian pharaohs.
Many species of moths feed on the
tears of larger animals.

82. What about care
for these guys?

83. Jeff Wilhelm’s research
on boys
• …boys resist learning from people who
do not take an interest in them and who
don’t show care for them.

85. Unless someone
like you cares a
whole awful lot,
nothing is going to
get better. It's not.

90. How do you see students who
challenge you?

95. How might teachers see students who
challenge them if they were
committed to creating a culture of
care? If they had a ferocious
commitment to their potential?

96. A teacher I want to work for won’t give up on me.
I’m more motivated to do the work when I know
that a teacher believes in the “future me.”
She believed in my ability to succeed;
therefore, I believed in myself.