ENGAGE! Three Tips for Middle School Teachers

How do you get 14-year-old kids who are awkwardly trying to be "cool" to care about whatever it is the state has mandated they become proficient in?  I don't have all the answers and I fail every day...but here are three ways to get your students in the game:

Move: I am a firm believer in getting students up out of their seats and moving. It doesn't have to be long, but a simple, "Stand up and push in your chair" gets some blood moving.

Then...and this is key... Tell them what you want them to talk about before you give them their partner criteria. What I mean by that is once they stand, give them the question they are trying to answer or the topic they are going to discuss first. If you start off with, "You are going to find someone wearing the
same color socks as you and talk about..." they are not listening- They are checking to see if their friends are wearing the same color socks.

The great thing about having them meet with someone from a different table is that they are bringing back "outsider information" when they get back to their original table. Their brain is engaged, their blood is moving, they got to chat with a friend for a few seconds, and life is good!

Academic Freedom: I give a lot of assignments where there are a few different ways to complete them. Mainly they involve some form of writing and/or drawing. My mentor teacher whom I met on my first day in the classroom, and on the 3rd day accompanied me to the superintendent's office (I had left Iraq about two weeks prior and had some "leadership tips" for said superintendent which were not warmly received...but I digress...) taught me that, "If a student can illustrate it, then they understand it." That has stuck with me since 2007.

It's not possible on all assignments, but whenever you can, let students engage the material their own way. Make a poster, pamphlet, or script for a YouTube video (that works better than if you say, "play").

Be Vulnerable: I have tried so many things in my classroom that have failed...it's awesome! I say that because if we only do what we know how to do we will never get better. We need to push our students in that direction and model it ourselves. Heads turn and ears perk up when you say, "I have never tried this before, and I have no idea how it's going to work...but we are going to see!"  This instills a little bit of stress into the class but in a good way. Students don't want to fail and they don't want to see their teacher fail. But the fact that you show them you are willing to fail means a lot. The best part about trying new things is when they work!

I was messing around with QR codes at m
y previous school (probably 2011-2012). They were kind of a new thing and a lot of people didn't even know what they were when they saw one. I had my students in patterns make "flash card videos" with an anti-bullying message. Then I linked those to a QR code, printed it with a title that said, "BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD" and taped them up in the commons area. Most students didn't have phones then, but we had a bunch of iPads in the building. At lunch, there were little groups of students all huddled around an iPad watching an anti-bullying video made by some of their little brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends. It was so cool!

Use your imagination and show some vulnerability!
You are a human too- You are allowed to try things that fail.

So are your students- Read about preparing to fail here!