Key to Engagement: The Launch of a Lesson

I have led enough staff development to say this with certainty: No matter how much time I have available to teach adult learners, I can completely jeopardize the effectiveness of my entire time with them within the first few minutes of our meeting. 

How?  Failure to launch (not necessarily a reference to that Matthew McConaughey movie)!

Almost every teacher I have worked with has thoughtfully engaged in the instructional planning process.  They have thoughtfully selected the lesson they deliver to students for some meaningful, often instructional purpose.  Most teachers are even excited to share those lessons with their students.  That tends to be a constant -- teachers plan and teachers believe in what they do with students.

So why does it so often happen that students (especially our older students) tend to disengage and find little relevance in these well thought out lessons so quickly and so consistently?

After watching a few classrooms this week I was reminded that it might just come down to a failure to truly launch a lesson in a meaningful, engaging, inspiring way.

What I notice about adult learners is that I have about five minutes (on a good day) to hook them on learning some new tool or embracing some new strategy.  Unfortunately, the "hook" isn't always the first thing I need to share with them -- it doesn't come first in the chronological process of learning to utilize the tool.  If I miss that window I tend to lose my least dedicated audience.  And every additional minute or two after that I can visibly see waining interest in a growing number of learners.  Sometimes I can recover and bring them back, but it often seems as if we never get that initial enthusiasm back if do not plan well and miss that initial opportunity to hook them.  And truly no marvel of technology that I can share with them is going to bring them back!

This means I have to plan a little differently. I have to think about my intro.  I need to answer questions like, "Why does this matter to my audience?" or "What is the most important or interesting element in what I'm sharing with them today?"  When I know that, I have to strategically re-think my delivery -- how do I deliver on these elements early in the lesson without completing losing my audience.  Teachers hold the ability to do exactly that -- re-structure a lesson order and then find a way to tie it all together in the end.

This week I saw some pretty interesting lessons on topics that should definitely be of interest to students!  However, in several cases an initial failure to make a compelling argument as to why the topic was worth the investment of time and energy to students, or a failure to hook students and develop an interest right from the start of the lesson, left many students visibly disengaged from the meat of a well developed lesson.

 In journalism taking the most pertinent element of the story and burying several paragraphs in is called "burying the lede."  Instead, be the salesperson you want to buy from!  Put a little showmanship into the first few minutes.  Be dramatic.  Be fun!  Oversell the product a little.  We all want to be part of something special, and the first few minutes of anything seems to be the key to making something stand out from the ordinary.  You already plan great lessons.  Now just spend a few extra minutes thinking about the sizzle that is going to draw them in and find ways to highlight that first.   Once you have them hooked, it is amazing what learners are willing to put forth.

I Commit to Taking a Risk ... with Students

At The One Conference, a conference that our team recently organized in our district, the pinnacle of the day was something that could have been easily overlooked. 

It was a display of poster boards with each school's name that read "I Commit..."  The intent was that every staff member would take a moment to reflect on the day, to reflect on what the learning meant to their professional practice, and to make a commitment in writing to trying something new with their students before the school year ends.

While seemingly small, the central message in this activity is that we need to convert our professional learning into professional action.

So many wonderful ideas, tools, and practices were shared at The One Conference.  Thank you again to our many marvelous presenters who were daring enough to share with their colleagues.  It is now our responsibility as professional educators to turn those engaging, meaningful, and creative ideas into something more substantial than just great ideas.  We have to put them into practice with our students. 

While many of us may feel we still do not have the "skills" needed to attempt these practices or using these tools on our own, that is not a good enough reason to avoid trying new things with our students. We can overcome that lack of technical skill or know-how with our willingness to step forward and take a risk.  Risk taking is a deeply personal affair -- every person's tolerance related to risk varies dramatically. That's good -- it means we can try things that are just beyond our comfort level and still have it be a risk. When we take that risk, that's when we have an opportunity to learn and grow (and we give our kids an opportunity to learn and grow in new ways as well).

Many of us are starting to think about where we will implement our new strategies and tools we learned about and committed to at The One Conference this semester.  Acknowledge that you are taking a risk and you are doing so for the benefit of your students.  Thank you for your commitment to them.  If you need support along the way, please be willing to reach out and connect.  There are plenty of people eager to support you as you take that risk!

New Experience in Google Drive

With the adoption rate of Google Apps within our school district, I'm fairly certain most teachers are finding Google Apps for Education to be an advantageous addition to working, teaching, and learning.

However, as is OFTEN the case with Google, things change and they change quickly.

Google Drive has been reformatted to incorporate a new user experience that brings added benefits to the way we work with greater efficiency.  The video below from Google outlines many of the new changes.

With any new change, though, there is opportunity for confusion as users get used to the new platform.  Honestly, it seems as if the changes actually bring back some skills that many users were previously familiar with when searching for and selecting files on a computer, so these changes may be exactly what some users have been waiting for.

Take a moment to watch the video, switch over the new Drive experience (I did so by selecting the gear icon when I was in Google Drive and selected New Drive Experience), and start getting a bit more comfortable with the new layout, format, and toolset this version of Google Drive offers.

Additionally, if you have not yet realized it, Google Apps on the iPad has made some major alterations in the past few months that teachers should be aware of.  New apps, including Docs and Sheets, are now the apps used to EDIT Google docs and sheets files, and Drive is the storage and management app.  The video below is a pretty good overview of what these apps can do.  Again, if you have not seen this yet, now would be a GREAT time to get familiar with these apps before the students return.