Engaging Lessons? We are Educators, not Entertainers
Still trying to come up with lessons that are ‘relevant and engaging’? It’s not just your own time you’re wasting, warns Andy Lewis…
- by Andy Lewis
The terms ‘relevance’ and ‘engagement’ have been widely used by schools and teachers in the pursuit of solving a range of perceived problems.
Students will be more interested in your subject if it is ‘relevant’ to their lives; students will be better behaved if they are ‘engaged’.
Crucially, ‘engagement’ has also been used as a proxy for learning; ‘relevance’ sometimes a substitute for differentiated and appropriate learning.
I am increasingly convinced none of this is true.
However, a few years ago, I spotted a slide shared from a Brilliant Club presentation outlining key definitions for relevance and engagement, and I have shared these time and time again. They are best summarised, with clarification, as stating:
- Engagement is not fun and games; it means the curriculum is structured so students can access it, it has clear purpose, it is ambitious (novel and challenging).
- Relevant is not ‘down with the kids’; it links to other topics in the curriculum, links to other subject areas, and students are introduced to current academic thinking on the topic, even if simplified.
What, where, why?
I was never trained in curriculum design at any point during my teacher training, or even beyond. I remember being asked to plan a scheme of work, of course, but this is quite simply not enough.
If students are to be engaged, there needs to be a clear and precise overview of what they are learning, designed by a real expert in the subject.
Careful consideration is required about ‘what goes where and why?’ Understanding the knowledge you want to impart to students is a vital part of this.
And when it comes to ‘relevance’, well, if we do not believe that the material we are teaching is interesting and worthwhile learning, then our students rarely will.
Instead of trying to relentlessly find hooks and links to popular culture, we need to accept that the content of the lessons has value in itself.
It does not need a ‘pop song’, it does not need a football analogy, it does not need anything ‘shock jock’. Believe it or not, thinking about hard and difficult ideas is appealing to students.
Students will be able to access and engage with material far better if we spend time ensuring that they really understand specific definitions, concepts and ideas.
If we have planned our curriculum well, and have built in sufficient practice and recall, students should be making the clear connections to their prior learning.
This helps them to think far more deeply, and gives the the ability to challenge the new ideas presented.
Something better
I fear too often we create massive distractions in our schools and classrooms. We are not clear enough in what we actually want students to learn from a particular lesson, or series of lessons, and as such, create a lot of distraction.
There are some great examples from Didau (What if everything you knew about education was wrong?) and Willingham (Why Don’t Students Like School?) who cite teachers hunting for potatoes in the classroom in a lesson on the Great Famine, and baking biscuits for a session about the Underground Railroad.
Through gimmicks like this, students may well learn and remember something – but all too often, it’s not what we intended to teach them that sticks.
There is also a moral imperative. I once saw a teacher begin their unit on Islam with an image from the July 7th bombing showing the London bus with its roof blown off.
This, apparently, would “get the students talking”. I’m sure it did, but not without a danger of reinforcing Islamophobia, when education should be trying to combat it. We need to be careful what we share, and when.
Finally, I think it is vital to remember that we are not entertainers, we are educators. We are there to ensure students are taught – and remember – the very best that has been thought and said about our subjects.
We are not there to try and rival YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram. We are there to offer something far more purposeful, meaningful and longer lasting. And we do this by aiming to be genuinely relevant and engaging.
Andy Lewis is an assistant headteacher and director of RE at St Bonaventure’s in East London. He is a textbook writer, blogger and can be found on Twitter as @andylewis_re.
