How to Increase Student Engagement School-Wide | E236

Key Moves to Increase Student Engagement:  Appreciate Teachers' "Why" and Connect to Your Vision:     ◦ Leaders should share their vision often and loudly, connecting it with teachers' personal "why". Your teachers look to you for vision.  Celebrate Small Wins Loudly and Often:     ◦ Publicly acknowledge positive things you see happening in classrooms.     ◦ Leave positive Post-it notes for teachers; these can serve as powerful reminders that they are on the right track and encourage more of those actions.     ◦ Share wins in faculty meetings (at the beginning and throughout) and in weekly newsletters.     ◦ Celebrating wins tells everyone what is "awesome," aligns with the vision, and helps kids be engaged, implicitly encouraging others to follow suit. "What you focus on grows".  Protect Planning and Collaborative Time:     ◦ Faculty meetings should not be boring updates that could be emails. Teachers often cite meetings as the one thing they would change in education.     ◦ Use this rare collaborative time to model engagement strategies you want to see in the classroom, such as Project-Based Learning (PBL) moves, collaboration, voice, and choice.     ◦ When you model "sit and get" in meetings, you are communicating that this is how teaching and learning are done. Instead, model empowered and engaged learning.  What NOT to Do: Don't Just Launch PBL Ineffectively:     ◦ Avoid sending only one person to a PBL training and expecting them to train the entire staff or for others to instantly become innovators. This often leads to frustration and the abandonment of PBL.     ◦ Effective PBL implementation requires a comprehensive approach, as seen in the Babcock Ranch model school in Florida, where everyone is PBL certified, they use structured processes (like the "PBL Simplified" book), and have PBL-certified coaches.     ◦ PBL is a significant shift, especially for teachers accustomed to traditional teaching. Success comes when PBL becomes ingrained in the school's culture and daily operations. Practical Steps for Implementation:  Start small but be consistent.  Audit current engagement by observing classrooms and identifying teachers who are already doing great things.  Find and "fuel" these teachers by lifting up their PBL-like actions (e.g., great entry events, community partners, voice and choice).  Build time into your schedule for discussing PBL and fostering staff collaboration.  Create engagement for your teachers so they can experience it firsthand and then model it for their students. Once student engagement is achieved, "shout that from the rooftops". Leadership Advice and Resources:  Don't lead alone. Leading is challenging, so build a team. Consider starting a leadership team if you don't have one to help build a common vision. For a full year or three-year plan for PBL implementation, including information on teacher retention and grant funding, visit pblwebinar.com. • If this episode was helpful, please rate and review the show to help other leaders find it.