Have you ever heard somebody say something and said to yourself, “That really make sense.” And then days later, or weeks later, or years later, and even decades later you realize how profound that statement was. Well  Phil Schlechty has one of those quotes. The first time I heard it I was intrigued but over the last couple of decades, as I thought more and more about it, I realized how profound it is. Phil said;

“A teacher’s job is not to teach kids, a teacher’s job is to create meaningful engaging work whereby the student learns the things we want them to learn.”

How profound. Phil also led me to understand how important authentic engagement is to learning. I don’t know if Phil decided authentic engagement was important and that led him to understand what the teacher’s role needed to be. Or if he analyzed successful teachers and saw that those that created work for the student, that was meaningful and engaging, led to engaged students. It may be a chicken or egg discussion.

But the reality is this, for students to truly learn, not just remembering stuff until the  standardized tests are over, they must be emotionally engaged in the learning process. Nothing emotionally engages students in what they’re learning more than doing work that is meaningful and engaging to them.

“Work” also implies that the students are doing something, not passively observing as the teacher does the work. There is a mountain of research that you only learn something, by doing something. My friend Roger Schank has led the research and the movement for learning by doing.

I think when you couple learning by doing, Roger Schank’s work, with Phil Schlechty’s theories, work that is meaningful and engaging, you have the recipe for students becoming remarkable. – Steve Wyckoff

The idea of engaging students has long been an interest of mine. I suspect it goes back years to my first interaction with Phil Schlechty who enlightened me on the different types of engagement. Phil talked about four kinds of engagement; authentic, ritualistic, passive compliant, and rebellious.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this lately as I listened to the discussions about “motivating” our students on state standardized tests. We use everything from pep rallies to brides, for the kids and their parents, in order to raise test scores.

That’s what got me back thinking about Phil and his work. Over the years I’ve tried to motivate several individuals, with the appropriate skills and knowledge, to develop a survey that measures authentic engagement. There are many “engagement” surveys out there, but to the best of my knowledge they all measure ritualistic engagement.

So what’s the difference? Ritualistic engagement is characterized by stuff like the student always being on time the class, always turning in their homework, paying attention during class, etc. Authentic engagement is a much different animal. Students who are authentically engaged get “lost” in their work. They are so into what they’re doing that they lose track of time.

Csikszentmihalyi in his research called it “flow.” But there is a world of difference between true authentic engagement and pretending to be authentically engaged. As I’ve written before, I have the opportunity every semester to speak to almost 200 education students at the University of Kansas. I’ve done it for nine years. In each of those nine years I discussed the difference between authentic engagement and ritualistic engagement with the students.

I always end this discussion by asking them how many of them were authentically engaged on a regular basis in high school. I’ve never had more than 5% or 6% of the students say they were authentically engaged. But when I asked them how many of them had their teachers convinced they were authentically engaged, every hand goes up, and the room breaks out in laughter.

The point of this? If you’re truly going to make real school change you have to start by authentically engaging every student! Our teachers do a wonderful job of convincing kids to at least act like they care about the nonsense we do in schools. If we were doing things that were meaningful and engaging to the students, they wouldn’t have to pretend. – Steve Wyckoff

If  you ask high school kids to describe school in one word, what word would they choose? I’ve asked this question for years, I’ve had four answers, worthless, prison, sucks, and

BORING

I do get the occasional answer that varies from these four, for instance I had a professor from a College of education tell me that he was positive most kids would answer with words like, invigorating, interesting, and stimulating. I suspected he may have been abusing drugs.

Phil Schlecty says that we get kids who are engaged in one of four ways:

Authentically engaged: these are the kids that are so engaged in what they’re doing that they lose track of time. They look up and the bell is ringing, and they didn’t even know that the end of the period was at hand. These are the kids that Csikszentmihalyi would say or in “flow.” This is the state of engagement that we should try to achieve as often as possible, but rarely see especially in our core curricula.

Ritualistically engaged: these are the kids that say, “Don’t tell me what I  need to learn, tell me what I’ve got to do to get an A.” These are the teacher pleasers. They’ve learned how to play the game of school. Sadly when we talk about students being engaged, we mean ritualistically engaged. These are the kids that turn their homework everyday, show up to class every day and on time, smile at like they care, and do what they’re told.

Passive compliant:  these are the kids that say, “Don’t tell me what I need to learn, tell me what I’ve got to do to get by.” These are the students that the teacher has the unwritten agreement with, if they don’t bother the teacher, the teacher won’t bother them. Sadly these kids float through school making passing grades, just barely, never being authentically engaged, and never understanding the joy of being in a state of flow.

Rebellious: these are the kids that just don’t tolerate the system and let us know about it. Their needs aren’t being met but they refuse to sit by passively as victims of the system. They rebel in different ways, some angrily, some through passive aggressiveness, and some who just quit coming, either literally or intellectually.

I think the Phil Schlecty has one of my most often quoted statements. Phil Says

” A teacher’s job is not to teach kids. A teachers job is to create meaningful engaging work whereby the kids learn the things we want them to learn.” -  Phil Schlecty

I think he’s right on target. If we give kids work that is meaningful and engaging to them, and it teaches them the things that we want them to learn, we will have made great strides toward improving our schools. Our goal should be to constantly increase the level of authentic engagement on the part of every student in the system. – Steve Wyckoff