Category Archives: student engagement

Using Desmos to have a little fun in Precalculus!

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I have found myself in a pretty lucky situation in
Pre-Calculus. For a variety of reasons I am a little ahead of where I need to
be in the curriculum so I am able to slow things down a bit while we are remote
learning. I am grateful because the particular chapter we are covering is very
challenging for most students. Polar coordinates, Complex Numbers in Polar form
and Vectors are never easy in the best of times but I want to make sure that
the students can still master these very important concepts.
Polar coordinates are
a brand new concept to the students. They are used to graphing on a rectangular

coordinate system using ordered pairs (x, y).  The polar coordinate
system looks like the figure below and the ordered pairs are now (r, θ)
where r is the length of a radius and theta is the angle.

For most students, polar coordinates are completely bizarre
and seem to have no relevance to real life. However, when I was developing the
Trigonometry curriculum for the new Math Program, I came across a Desmos
Classroom activity for introducing polar coordinates. This activity uses images and situations students have seen in the movies
for navigation on submarines and aircraft to put this coordinate system into
perspective.

For those who don’t already
know, Desmos started as an online graphing calculator but it has developed into
so much more in recent years. A teacher can set up an activity and invite their
students to join and the students can proceed through a series of screens that
have different tasks and questions. The teacher can monitor all of this from a
teacher dashboard and when the teacher wants to share out student work, the
students’ names can be anonymized by substituting in the names of famous
mathematicians! I have used this several times in class already (this will be
the subject of a different blog post) but I wasn’t sure how this would work in
a remote classroom.
The students started the activity by watching a short
movie clip showing a tense battle in a submarine with the sonar operator
shouting out the location of “bogeys” that were attacking the sub. The students
then advanced to a screen that set up the activity.

I was able to watch
their progress as they moved through the screens.
After a series of
screens where students learned how to use polar coordinates, the students were
put to the test!

The students were
racing to see who could finish first. I was able to watch the students work in
real time and was announcing over our zoom meeting who was the closest to clearing
all the bogeys.
The activity also gave me a
great opportunity to check for understanding.
  
In the end I was able
to get some final feedback. I highlighted a
couple of fun comments.


I think the class enjoyed this and I am going to
be looking for more Desmos activities for us to do in the future!

Not just recycle – UPcycle

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Sad to say the clothing/fashion industry is not very sustainable – and for years it has been thought to be the second largest contributor to pollution after oil. And while it may not hold second place  (see NY Time article) clothing and fashion still has a ways to go in cleaning up their act.

That is why I was excited to see an UpCycle challenge on Project Runway. I have to admit that Project Runway is the only reality TV competition that I routinely watch – usually on mute. I like to see how the designers approach challenges and I (like many of you) am always on the lookout for how I can meld my classroom lessons with the real world.

That is why this week’s hands on project in Period 3 Costume and Fashion Design is to create a new outfit from the pile of clothes I bought at Goodwill. Each student needs to use at least 2 articles of clothing and re-work them into at least 1 new garment.

To help them get started I shared about a costume we re-made in Company last spring for Pygmalion. We had an odd pair of wide legged pants (which 3 people could fit into), but the fabric pattern was fantastic. I suggested we make a coat out of it for one of the characters. So, Emily Walsh and Maggie Heiskell cut and ripped apart the seams and then Emily laid out the pieces and using the measurements of the actor we cut and sewed a coat.

I am excited to see what my students come up with – several of them jumped right into it,

Alexa and Christina cut and measure 2 men’s t-shirt that they will rework into shorts, mini-skirt and new tops.
Isabelle draped a scarf on a dress form to make a blouse and is cutting away the excess.
while a couple others needed more time to consider what it is they wanted to create and how they should go about doing it.

Ruth, Allie, Malia and Stella look online for inspiration from online fashion sites and Pintrest.

Day 2 of Projects. . .More students actively cutting up their clothes.
Stella even had her mom go with her to Goodwill to pick up new items as she had decided to change her project from Wednesday. She show up on Friday with a purple skirt, a pair of jeans and a picture of a halter dress that is her inspiration. Several of the girls at her table plan to transforms jeans into a skirt or dress and we talked a lot about where/what to cut and how the shape of the jeans would help us decide where we cut.

One student got the whole table to laugh when, after asking my advice on how she should cut sher jeans she remarked “Wow, you really know what you’re doing.” I was impressed when Bridget, who hasn’t fully engaged in the class, came to see me on Monday (the day we closed campus) to ask to take her project home so she could work on it. This is not required as most girls don’t have access to equipment so I paused this project and we switch to a unit on Fashion History.

In an interest survey given to the class I already know that most of my students want to do hands on projects over slide presentations, reading, research or writing. I am hopeful that I can keep them engages as we transition to Online Learning during March.

Here are the pics from Day 2:

These Seniors are fully engaged trying to figure out how to deconstruct their clothing items.

Bridget surprised me on Monday asking to take her project home so she would work on it while campus was closed.

I like having several students at the machines at one time. They can help each other out with questions, since I can’t be everywhere at once.

Christina is trying to figure out how to do a half shirt, half halter on the dressform.

Talking It Out

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     I want to talk about my junior final. Tiz, Jeff and I just concluded a short, three-week unit to finish up the semester. We wanted to end the year with an SEL based unit, so we exposed students to literature loosely based on the theme of self-love. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, students read and analyzed various poems and pieces of literature. They practiced annotating and discussing how these types of shorter works are created, so there was heavy emphasis on writer’s craft/literary devices during class lessons.
     I’m really happy with the writing they produced for the final, and I think that one reason the writing is decent is because of the process they were required to work through. Over the course of the last three weeks, students practiced this process several times. That helped. On the day of the final, students were introduced to two brand-new pieces of literature. Together we read through them; they had pencil in hand. Then, students had to quickly choose which piece of literature they were going to work through for their final writing piece. Once students chose which text they liked, they had about 6 minutes to annotate it by themselves. After that, each student had to find a peer, who chose the same piece of literature, and they discussed each other’s annotations/ideas. I think this is such a valuable step in the process; Tiz and I discussed how our best ideas often come from talking it out. After their talking time, they wrote. Once all the prewriting steps were completed, students had about an hour to write for the final.
      I’m now grading these writing pieces, and they’re not bad. Students are talking about the tone of literature and how that tone was created. I’ve found that students were mostly successful in articulating these in a clear and concise fashion. I’m happy. Really, I feel like I won just getting 16/17 year olds to write for an hour, not on SnapChat.

She Kills Monsters (Drama 101)

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Monster Time!!!

Students work on numerous Costume and/or Monster building activities on a Wednesday afternoon at Company.
So whether you know what it means to LARP (Live Action Role Play) or maybe you remember D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) or maybe you just felt like the odd kid out, this play’s for you.
The fall production of She Kills Monsters is in full swing and Wednesday afternoons are Monster building time.
We have goblins, demons, kobalds, succubi, and so much more.

We also need to build the armor that will protect our heroine and her crew as they fight these monsters.

On any given Wednesday the Costume room at the theatre could have as many as 10 students working on building the monster costumes. While it can be hectic, I find it is quite fun to be moving around the room helping students troubleshoot their costume construction hurdles or suggest other methods for getting a similar result.

Emily Walsh as a “BugBear”.
Emily, a sophomore, serves as Costumes Crew Head and is designing and building 6 BugBear costumes for the play.

(While I was in the process of writing this blog, I was asked to write a blurb for the Alumnae Newsletter and I think it does a great job of expressing my feelings about working with Company).

When I graduated in 1998, I never thought I would one day be back and teaching at Carondelet. But after working as an elementary School Librarian in San Francisco for four years, and getting tired of using all my money on rent, I felt the need to return to the East Bay.

As I was looking to see what was available for someone with a Masters in Library & Information Science (San Jose State ’05) and a love of Theatre Arts, I found a posting for a Library Assistant position at Carondelet. While I knew I was over qualified, I was also drawn to opportunity to work at my Alma Mater, to give back to the school that had helped shape me. 


Now as I start my 13th year on campus as a Faculty member and I can’t help but look back at all the students I have worked with and the opportunities that have come my way since I returned in the fall of 2007 to Carondelet. 

I am told that I wear a lot of hats on campus: I am the Librarian & Textbook Manager, the Yearbook Advisor, teach in the Visual & Performing Arts Department, and help moderate Company, our amazing theater program with De La Salle. As a student, it was through Company that I found my place and explored my passion for sewing and costume design which led me to major in Theatre Arts in college with an emphasis in Costume Design & Arts Management (BA Theatre Arts, Notre Dame de Namur University ’02). Now it is my pleasure to help guide and mentor students interested in Costume, MakeUp or Hair design. Three days a week after school, you can find me at the DLS Theater in the old band room working with students on the current show.

This year’s fall production of She Kill Monsters really takes me back to high school. It is set in 1995 in a small midwest high school and focuses on a pair of sisters, Agnes and Tilly. She Kill Monsters is a comedic and action-packed story about a high school girl who discovers her dead little sister had a life she knew nothing about. Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Role-Playing Game was Tilly’s refuge and a place of freedom.  By the end of the story, the audience can decide who the real monsters are. Helping my students recreate the look and feel of 1995 (grunge, preppy, etc) as well as creating the fantasy characters in D&D has been so much fun. I hope you can join us!

The Value of Student Agency

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At this point in the school year, I am starting to see some of my students emerge from the pack. These are the ones who write five engaging paragraphs when I ask for a 300-word response, the ones who listen to every episode of Serial when I ask them to listen to the first one, the ones who find it fun to write an original “form follows content” sentence. These are the ones destined for the parking lot banners, our showroom students. They seem to shrug off the notion of points and grades, and are just bursting with intrinsic motivation to learn for the sake of learning.
In high school, I was never this type of student. I was a diligent homework doer, and was lucky enough that school always came pretty easily to me. But my primary motivation to achieve was instrumental – I wanted to go to college so that I could get out of Yucca Valley, the small desert town where I had lived my whole life.
When I started college at UCSD, I tried to employ the same academic approach that had always been successful to me. I was a structural engineer major, mainly because I had been good at math in high school. But I only had a vague sense of what exactly a structural engineer did – I figured it had something to do with structures or buildings, maybe something like architecture. I persisted through, doing my homework and taking tests, and by the end of my freshman year, I was struggling to earn C’s in some of my engineering classes. I trusted my professors and expected the learning to just come to me, and with each subsequent semester my frustration bloomed. 
One of my favorite places at UCSD was the bookstore – I spent hours browsing the walls of books that had nothing to do with structural engineering. I took it upon myself to read all that I could, starting with the Beats then Gabriel Garcia Marquez then Dostoyevsky. I aspired to fill in some of my knowledge gaps of the human story, and even if I could not understand what Faulkner was saying exactly, I knew that if I persisted, I could see his vision of the world.
At the end of an especially dismal semester as an engineer major, I decided to try something different. I registered for introductory writing classes and decided to take a break from engineering. I figured at worst, I would take a sort of vacation and earn a minor in English. But the whole course of my life changed that semester. Even though writing was challenging to me and I did not find immediate success, I discovered that I had deep internal motivation for the written word. I remember feeling stunned that I could earn a college degree for something that I had genuine passion for – it sort of felt like I was pulling one over on everyone – I was finally learning for the sake of learning and getting credit for it.
Now as a teacher, I identify this concept that I found in college as student agency. A quick Google search of student agency will lead to several definitions that have to do with autonomy, engagement, self-efficacy and being self-directed. In short, it seems to be the concept of students taking the control of their own learning. Students who have agency are those who are internally motivated to learn in their classes. They are the ones who stay after class to continue the conversation, the ones who read on their own, the ones who make us feel like we must be doing something right.
Lately I have been wondering whether the concept of student agency is largely undervalued in high school classes. We all have our curriculum and content that we want to impart into our students, and our students have numerous motivations for why they do what we ask of them. Many of these motivations are extrinsic though – from parents to grades to the fear of not getting into their top college. I wonder what happens to these students when they leave us, if they can keep it up, or if they run smack into their own versions of my structural engineering wall.
This semester, I’ve been considering what a class would look like if student agency was the most valued skill. What if the coursework and the daily lessons were crafted to promote student autonomy first? What if course content was not the main priority? What if the development of content-specific skills was not even the highest priority? What if I put all of my attention and energy into creating conditions that would promote student agency above all else? What if the goals of becoming a strong writer, reader or lover of literature became secondary in my class to becoming someone who learns for the sake of learning?
After sitting with these questions for a while, I came up these four characteristics that I would prioritize in an agency-first class:
·     Choice
Students would be able to choose their own academic pursuits within the scope of my class. They would choose what they read, what they write and determine the pace that works best for them. I would create a curriculum structure that articulated the goals of the course, and give students the freedom to demonstrate their mastery of those goals. I would be a collaborator, constantly checking in with their progress, and they would be responsible for documenting their progress. 
·     Authentic Engagement
While it is easy to leverage points and grades to get students to do work, it is much more of a challenge to make course material engaging. When planning my classes, I generally operate under the assumption that none of my students would choose to come to my class if given an option for how to spend this block of time. They mostly just want to do the work to get the points to keep their parents happy. To create a class that is authentically engaging requires me to be attentive to my audience, to relate to my audience and to earn buy-in from my audience. It is constant work to cultivate intrinsic engagement, but it needs to be a starting point.
·     Accessible Entry Points
To nurture intrinsic motivation for a subject requires me to make the connection between the individual student and the course content. If I ask them to read a book that they don’t care about then give a writing prompt that they don’t care about, the results will be expectedly uninspired. All of our students can and should be challenged to learn new things, but these new things need to be put in the context of the world as they know it first.
·     Ban “Should”

Being a teacher can be frustrating, and sometimes I find myself saying that my students “should” know this or “should” be able to do something. As soon as I start “shoulding”, I defer my responsibility to meet that student where they are at. When I ban the word “should” from my thinking, I stop looking at the class as a whole, and am forced to see my students individually and differentiate my instruction according to their individual needs.
If these were my primary objectives for an English class, I wonder if it would be enough. Where does academic rigor fit in? Would this class be negligent in teaching course content and course-specific skills? Is my head so far in the clouds that my students would be unprepared for college reading and writing? 
Or maybe students in a class like this would actually get more out of my academic content than they would otherwise. Maybe they would become stronger writers and readers because I had created a space where they could engage with my instruction better. Maybe they would find internal motivation for reading challenging works of literature, crafting arguments, or even using semi-colons.  

Is this too idealistic? Maybe. Is it possible given the current system of college admissions? Maybe not. But as a teacher, I never have the delusion that I will find the magic lesson plan or book that solves all of my issues. This work is messy and beautiful, and the only thing I can ever hope is that I get better at it from year to year. The world is fundamentally different from when I was in high school and will be fundamentally different 25 years from now. One of the most invigorating aspects of this profession is that we get to be visionaries and look beyond how everything has gone up until now. 

My Furniture Paradigm Shift

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On my last day with desks, I felt a bit apprehensive. Maybe even a bit nostalgic. It has been my ritual for years to walk into my classroom in the morning, put my bag down, and straighten the rows of desks. It gives me a sense of order, a good starting point for the day. But when I saw the maintenance guys that Friday afternoon sizing up the job of desk removal from my classroom, I wondered if maybe I had signed on for something I wasn’t really ready for.

 
In my 19 years of teaching, I have always had desks in rows, and I have gotten pretty good at standing in front of my students and getting them to direct their attention to me. I have cultivated the skill of reading a crowd of teenagers, getting a little louder and more serious if they get a bit squirrely, playing the fool if I need their attention, snapping students back into the lesson if they are turned around or sneaking Instagram. When I’m on, I’m an orchestra conductor, and I can get all the eyes in desk rows to stay on me and whatever I have projected on the board. I’ve even had moments, after finishing an especially riveting performance, where I have wondered whether I shouldn’t try to find a stand-up comedy troupe, or try out for a small role in a play at the Lesher. 
The class discussion has been my jam for years, and there have been plenty of days when I left school in the afternoon with my head held high, congratulating myself for the lively discussions I facilitated. Those upright arms are like a forest of engagement, and it’s thrilling to know this thing I created is rocking, like learning is happening. And for those 12 to 15 students, some learning has probably happened. But if I’m looking at the entire picture, that means there were 15 to 20 for whom I have no idea what was happening. At Carondelet, many of our students have cultivated a quiet learning posture that makes them look brightly engaged on the outside, but who knows what is going through their minds. I know I have sat through plenty of PD presentations (and let’s be honest, some faculty meetings too) maintaining an outward appearance of engagement while my mind is surfing from the things I need to get done that afternoon to my son’s little league game to the trails I plan to run on my weekend long run to the type of beer I like best at Calicraft. And I know I can dive even deeper if there is absolutely no threat that I will be called on.

So on the first day with new furniture, I wondered how much it would impact my teaching habits. Kevin came into my classroom in the morning, bursting with excitement. One of the first students who walked into the room said she felt like she worked at Google, and I told her there was not a more perfect comment she could have made in front of Mr. Cushing. As the rest of the students came in throughout the day, I told them that there would be no seating chart, and I watched to see which spaces each one gravitated towards. They tried out the wheels on the chairs by rolling around the room, they slouched on the couch (Kevin did this too) and they spun. They went on dizzy spinning sprees, the dancers and ice skaters knowing how to spot the front of the room to keep from getting nauseous. They were genuinely excited, but I left school that day wondering what exactly it was that I was missing.
In the next few days I studied my students’ interactions with the furniture surreptitiously, and I also noticed my own habits. The way I configured the tables and chairs has really taken away the front of the classroom. The only reason I stand where I do is because that is the direction the projector is aimed. I also noticed that I have a clingy attachment to my podium. I found myself drifting towards the podium – which is now shoved in a nook next to some cupboards – reaching out for it when I talked, propping my arm on top of it awkwardly. When I told Kevin about this, he pointed out that my podium is my stage, and I realized he is right.
Overall I really didn’t expect new furniture to affect my thinking about teaching in such impactful ways, and some of the realizations I’ve come to in the past few weeks have been unexpected. In an effort to be brief (which is a challenge for me), I’ve narrowed my experiences with the new furniture to these four takeaways:
1.    That boy who used to drive me crazy with his constant fidgeting and tapping actually needs to fidget and tap to focus. If fact it seems pretty counterintuitive that engagement (with a text, with writing, with a lecture) would happen best while sitting still and silently. Yesterday I asked a student why she always trades out the stationary high top chair for one with wheels, and she said that she pays more attention when she has the freedom to move around a bit. 
2.    This is actually a continuation of my first point, but learning is often noisy and chaotic. It has been a little bit jarring for me to realize this, but when students are interacting with one another, I can hear their ideas, which allows for more teachable moments where I can confirm, challenge, redirect, or expand. This reminds me that just because students are sitting silently with their phones put away staring at a text or assignment does not mean they are fully engaged. This has also transformed my thinking about the noise in the inner court during classes – there is a melody to it now.
3.    There is a big difference between group work and teaming. Students often perceive group work as the break – the fun or creative assignment that mixes up the minutia. I used to think of it in the same way. But now, with all the spinning and rolling and fidgeting, I have been very intentional to create a learning environment in which the majority of my class activities are conducted within team interactions. When teaming is leveraged effectively, students can learn much better from their classmates than I could ever hope to accomplish in big class discussions. It is a bit of a cultural shift for them to differentiate between groups and teams, and I need to be explicit about my expected outcomes for each project and about teaming dynamics. This is the puzzle this year that is constantly buzzing around my head, and I’m grateful to have Sarah and Rachel from Teaming by Design to advise.
4.    My presence is kind of diminished in the class. This chops away at the ego a bit because I have definitely cultivated my teaching persona over the years. But I can also acknowledge that this persona has been a bit of a crutch for me at times, and has covered up some of my weaknesses as a teacher. Even if I do feel like a bit of a ghost now, I am still able to develop rapport with my students, and enough of them still come bug me throughout the day that I think they still like me well enough.

If anyone wants to continue the conversation on furniture or the intersection between teaming and furniture, let me know. Also if you want to schedule a classroom swap one day to try out the furniture, I’m open to it. I’m realizing that timed writes do not work as well on tables so Tiz and I are trading spaces today so that my A.P. students can use desks. I think that having a variety of learning spaces for different types of activities would be ideal, but I’ll put that idea in the cue for a different blog.

Reentry Is Rough

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Reentry is rough friends. This is my mantra for the first weeks of school.

1) I think I have such a tricky time with reentry in part because of the artificial lighting in my classroom. All of my classes are in room 21, which I love, but there is no natural light in that room, so it takes me a minute to adjust to the lack of sunlight.

 
This is a picture of my kitchen, my work area at home. Do you see all of the natural light? After spending the majority of summer break at home, spending days without natural light at school takes time to get used to.

2) The second reason reentry is rough is because I always start off feeling less than; I might need to get off Twitter. One day during the first week of school this is what I was met with via Twitter:

The fabulous Carol Jago tragically says, “Students feel unseen, anonymous, until the teacher learns their names.” No pressure, right? Look at the young woman (3rd comment) who brags that she knows all of her students’ names by day 2. Day 2! Well, right there I feel like a failure. Is the self-worth of my students determined by my ability to have a functioning short-term memory? Geez, I hope not.
3) Finally, this year reentry is particularly rough because I’m teaching juniors in English 3 for the first time in seven years and I’m alone. I am creating and planning curriculum for English 3 without a buddy, and I am out of my comfort zone. I’m used to collaborating. In my soul I am a people person, so planning this class has been a little scary and lonely.
I can see the light though. Or, I’m literally getting used to the light, and I mostly know all of the kids’ names. Plus, I’ve got a plan with juniors: keep them writing and engaged. And, I’m happy to report that I’m already sort of killing it with this group.

I just keep telling myself that I’ve got this. But, I’m not going to lie. Reentry is rough!

The Carrot Wins!

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The Carrot Wins!

What do high school students and Israeli Air Force pilots have in common? Both groups achieve learning goals better and faster when praised for achievement rather than criticized for failure. If you want your students to learn deeply and be fully engaged, throw out the sticks and bring out the carrots. This is the conclusion of world renowned Nobel Prize winner and expert statistician, Daniel Kahneman. His most recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that praise is much more effective impetus for learning than criticism.

The first response of many teachers have to this revelation is, “How can this be? Praise is nice, but I get best results when I push students; when I make them keep at it until they get it right.” Or maybe, “She got a D+ on the last assignment. She brought up the next one to a B-. That first low grade made her work harder.” These short term results may be true in some cases. They are memorable because they reinforce our belief that the stick works. But how many students just gave up? How many continued to get D+’s? And did this negative reinforcement help the students become more engaged in the learning process? Hundreds of experiments conducted by Daniel Kahneman provide statistical evidence that the long term results of negative feedback does not reinforce engaged long term learning. Praise for achievement always comes out on top.

It is time to look at our teaching to see how well we are employing the carrots. How are we using formative and summative assessment? Are assessments being used to praise progress or are they being used to criticize shortcomings? Think of video games. Failure to meet a goal simply means that you need to keep trying. Success is met with bells and whistles, a feeling of accomplishment, and it opens doors to more difficult challenges ahead. Moving forward is not motivated through fear of failure, but through the desire to succeed. The stick is replaced with the carrot. Learning must be seen as worthwhile, interesting, and even fun. This is the challenge. Instead of forcing students to learn, we must entice them to want to learn.

More to read:

For a lighter version of Thinking, Fast and Slow read The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis.


About the relationship of emotions to learning: “Emotions Are the Rudder That Steers Thinking”

Performance is over…now what?!

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In the fall we were prepared for the Christmas concert, after Christmas we prepared for the competition, and after the competition we prepared for the Spring Concert…the big performances are over. Now what?!


I imagine I’m not the only one trying to figure out how to keep the learning going at this point in the school year. But today I decided to try something new!

When I started rehearsal today, the students asked if they could nap, watch a movie, or work on other coursework. No way! I told my choral students that just because the concert is over doesn’t mean that learning should stop, and ultimately, my goal as a choral educator is to nurture my students’ love of singing so much so that they want to continue it beyond their years here at Carondelet. Their response was a nod or a shy smile, proof that I had a point.

Then I asked the choir leadership to go in the back of the room where our sheet music is stored and choose a piece- any piece- for us to sing today. They chose a simple two part arrangement of “Part of Your World” from Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Perfect. I told them they had 15 minutes to learn their part and then we would run the piece in its entirety. Chaos ensued as students whipped out their iPads to learn their parts…it was awesome.

What I’ve posted below is the run-through. It’s FAR from perfect, but the students were engaged and enjoyed the process. They are already talking about what challenge piece they want to work on this Friday! 

This made me curious: what do other teachers do when their final “performance” is complete? How do we keep students engaged up to the end?

Choice = Engagement

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Whenever possible I allow students to select a topic of
their choosing. I have found that providing choices, even just a few, always
enhances engagement. For example, when studying civil disobedience in Civics
class I made a list of about thirty people and groups who have committed civil
disobedience in the United States. Students, individually or in teams, chose a
topic for an oral report. Many students did research above and beyond the
requirements. They got so involved that it took three days to present all the
reports.
I included several guiding questions about civil
disobedience to provide a common ground for all the reports. Incorporating
these questions assured the reports would meet my learning objectives while
still giving students freedom to study topics they found interesting. Below are
some comments from their feedback.
“I liked that we could do our projects on basically anything
we wanted so that we could be learning about something that we are really
interested in.”
“I liked learning and presenting about a topic that is
interesting to me and being able to choose what I want to learn more about.”
“I liked that we got to pick our own topic to do for the
presentations because I found that I got very into it.”

Aside from the level of engagement, what I find interesting
about these comments is that the parameters were actually rather narrow.
Students had to pick from my list. They had to address my questions. We kept
the discussion focused on the pros and cons of civil disobedience. Yet,
students felt such a sense of freedom to study what they wanted to study.
Students also enjoyed hearing the other presentations. Here
are some responses about the presentations of others.
“I liked learning about all the different things that were
presented in the presentations.”
“The presentations about iPhone users and also Apple v FBI,
I found those two presentations very interesting.”
“I found that when researching topics and hearing about
others topics it has helped me further understand topics that are in our
everyday life.”

My usual experience is that students are not very interested
in the presentations of their classmates. I believe the fact that the
presenters were interested in what they were presenting made the audience
interested. Whenever I give choices, engagement levels increase. It’s one more
step toward student centered learning.