Maintaining Interest and Engagement

Albert Einstein once said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying.” Learning should never stop because “life never stops teaching.” Regardless of where you are in life, whether you are a child, or adult, you should constantly feed your brain. It is my job as the educational leader to challenge and push my staff to improve. This requires me to effectively model this for my staff. Through the use of Twitter, I am able to find great professional development for myself as well as my staff. I am able to share these resources with them through my Twitter account and our staff Google Classroom we have set up.

Involving students in the learning process is the key for high levels of engagement. Students no longer want to sit and get. They can do this on the Internet when they get home. They need to be active participants in this process.  This requires effectively planning from the teachers. If we want to push and challenge our students, additional planning is necessary. Raising the level of rigor in your classroom can’t happen by shooting from the hip.

When planning, you need to begin with the end in mind. We must know where we are going to go and then come up with a plan how we are going to get there. Involving students in the planning process is a great way to peak and maintain student interest, and engagement.

Enthusiasm and passion lay the path for students and staff. I often send my staff encouraging and motivational videos based on good teaching techniques, or ways to improve themselves to ignite a fire in themselves. If an educator is passionate about what they do, that passion will carryover into their classroom.  

I try very hard to encourage my teachers to think outside of the box. Sometimes in education, we get so wrapped in checking a box that we lose sight of teaching the whole child. Brene Brown said, "Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world." We want our students to be able to share their souls with the world.