Why is it important for a teacher to be captivating and engaging, and how do you do that in your classroom?
FRANK E. CUMMINGS III: “Many students, especially at the freshman level, probably aren’t much different than I was as a freshman. Often, they take a course because it’s required and they’re not really interested in it. So, you have to make the student want to learn — make it personal. Eye contact is important. Moving around the room is important, because you don’t want the environment to be static; you want it to be exciting, so I was constantly changing the room. I was fortunate, because there were large showcases at the entrance to my classroom and I kept rotating exhibitions in those cases. Often, many of my students enrolled in the class because of the things that were in the showcases. Also, the two classrooms I normally taught in had large windows, so if students were walking by they could see what was going on, and unless I was showing slides, I never closed those windows. I always had an open-door policy where students could move freely from one area to another.”
ZVI DREZNER: “It is very important to be captivating and engaging because otherwise the students get into the mode of daydreaming and I lose their attention. I do it by being animated, pacing a lot back and forth in front of the white board and I talk in an excited voice. I speak quite loudly to keep them awake (I have no control over that). I feel that the material is interesting and with my enthusiasm about the subject matter, I am able to convey this feeling to the students. I also ask many questions in class and pause to give the students an opportunity to come up with an answer. I never call on a student to answer a question but I solicit responses from the students and if they are wrong, I make sure that they do not feel bad about it.”
JANE V. HALL: “Let’s face it: Students are required to take many courses the value of which is opaque to them. It falls to us to figure out how to break through the resulting resistance and ensure that they have the opportunity to understand why every course has value if they will only give it a chance. Regularly using current events as a background and illustration for economic theories works for me. Our students might not read the Los Angeles Times, but they are engaged with the news through radio and TV, and they want to better understand what the heck is going on with stocks, inflation, trade agreements, wages, oil prices, etc. Economics can answer those and many other questions and once they see this, we have them.”
STEVEN N. MURRAY: “Some concepts may be difficult to grasp but science is exciting. I will make extraordinary attempts to get students out to the ocean because it’s so valuable to them. If I can get them “into the field” for four hours — even if we lose some hours in travel time — it’s worth it because they learn so much more when they experience the real world that we are studying. I emphasize problem solving in my field teaching, which is conducive to learning. I try to be flexible because I know they have other obligations — classes, jobs, and families. But, if I can create a schedule that gets them to the ocean, that’s usually far more meaningful to them.”
NANCY L. SEGAL: “Teachers have a great ability to bring new information to students, as well as new ways of thinking about familiar topics. Challenging students in this way is a great way to engage their interest and to motivate them.”
RAPHAEL J. SONENSHEIN: “Education is exciting, engaging, fun, scary and very human. The reason we have teachers instead of just passing around books is that it’s hard to learn without human contact and energy.”
HALLIE YOPP SLOWIK: “Many strategies are useful for engaging students. In general, we must model enthusiasm for the content, use novelty to grab students’ attention and spark their questions, use a variety of teaching structures (lecture, small group work, student presentations), give students opportunities to talk with one another, help establish links between the content and their lives, and help them set their own purposes for learning. We must keep the pace lively. Most important, we must honor who our students are and what they bring to the table. What experiences have they had? What do they already know about the topic? How can each student in my classroom contribute to the learning of the rest of us?”