Engagement: Loving What I Do

Prayer:

1.      For open hearts and minds in the group

2.      To learn something new that will help you become a better teacher

3.      For God to show allow you to the truth about engagement in your classroom

Opening Story:             

              “Nobody else wants to teach the math class. I guess it’s yours.”

               Math was my hardest subject in school, and the teachers who taught it didn’t help. It was boring, unrelatable, and foreign. Surely someone on the team was better at math than me. Right?

              Wrong. We had a science whiz who also loved social studies and a reading nerd who adored writing. That left me with a 90-minute math block for three rotations. What would I do with 90 minutes?

              I spent the summer reading and researching how to teach math in a “non-boring” way.  Centers, scavenger hunts, math literature, virtual field trips, math songs, Kagan Cooperative Learning strategies, math games, and math manipulatives filled my summer searches. The kids would love those ideas.

              As I reflected on my prior year, I realized curriculum and activities would not be enough. The whole structure of my classroom needed work. There was too much down time for students to get distracted. The students needed more structure and routine, but also individual responsibility and ownership. If I wanted my math classroom to come alive and never be boring, everything had to be intentionally thought through.

              I made detailed procedures for everything, from sharpening a pencil to using the bathroom. Then I designed a schedule and invested in a timer to make sure we kept our routine. Next was the opening review that would strategically tackle each of the math strands each day, especially fractions and decimals. Finally, I rehearsed pacing. One thing I’d learned already: behaviors are worse when there was a lull in forward progression.

              Then I attended a training that rocked my entire world—the importance of engagement. All those activities, ideas, and plans were wonderful, but if students were not meaningfully engaged in the individual activities, all my effort would be for naught. I thought about the wonderful material we learned in many of our professional development trainings, but because the concepts were poorly presented, I was not engaged enough to see their importance. But this particular training about engagement held my undivided attention as they used countless strategies modeling what it might look like in our classrooms.

              This was the missing piece. Every question I asked needed to require every person to have a formed response. Every student needed to be held responsible for all the presented content. No more calling on one student at a time while the rest of the class disengaged. Before I ever called on anyone, they needed to form a response and share it with a partner. If they didn’t share with a partner, they needed to write it down and think through the answer. If my students could learn to do this, my entire class had the potential to master the content.

              Engagement changed everything about my classroom, especially when paired with responsibility, pacing, procedures, and routine. I went from having decent classroom management to basically having zero behavior problems. When kids are consumed by learning, secured by a routine, steadied by a fast pace, and feel safe with consistent procedures the classroom can almost run itself. They knew what to do, what to expect, how to engage and suddenly my class was no longer boring. I utilized every minute of that 90-minute class period and the kids blossomed in ways I never imagined.

              If I picked the biggest need in the classroom for most teachers, it would be the need for engagement. Kids are disconnected, idle, bored, and distracted. If we are bored teaching the material, the kids are bored receiving it.

              Now let’s take this a step further. I think the biggest need in the religious community is the need for relevance and engagement. Believers are going through the motions, filling a spot out of duty, and missing the heart of God’s message. Just like we need to engage our students, we must find ways to engage with Jesus. If we are bored in our walk with Christ, something needs to change.

              Engagement changes everything. How’s your classroom? Relationships? Walk with God?

https://www.weareteachers.com/what-are-kagan-strategies/

Scripture Reading:

Read Luke 19:1-10 (NIV)

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

  Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Discussion

1. What if Jesus had kept walking and never engaged with Zaccheus? 

2. What effect did Jesus’ focused, intentional attention have on this sin-filled tax collector?

3. Think back to your favorite classes when you were in school. Did that teacher engage you? If so. How?

4. Are you engaged in your relationship with Jesus? How do you know?

Homework

              Read the story of Nicodemus in John 3:1-21. How did Jesus engage with him? What questions did he ask? What content did he tackle? How did he go about putting the ball back in Nicodemus’ court?

Personal Reflection

              Challenge yourself to practice engaging with Jesus this week, not simply going through the expected motions. Talk with him.  Make your time count. Be intentional. Connect with him. As you work on engaging with Jesus, think about how you can engage your students. What needs to change in your classroom so students are active learners and fully engaged with all you are teaching? Remember, if you’re bored, so are the kids.