Engaging Students Cognitively, Behaviorally and Emotionally

It's every teacher's biggest challenge: How can we get these students to engage with the material?

In this week's episode, SREB Coach Erin Anderson-Williams stops by the studio to teach Ashley how to better engage her students by considering their cognitive, behavioral and emotional needs.

Download our handout to get an overview of the lesson. 

The Southern Regional Education Board is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works with states and schools to improve education at every level, from early childhood through doctoral education and the workforce.

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Transcript

0:29

Hello, and welcome to Class Act Coaching, a podcast for teachers and instructional coaches. Hello, I am your host Ashley Shaw. And here with me once more is Daniel Rock, an SREB coach and coach selector for me. Hi again, Daniel. How are you? I was just honored to be, endowed with the new title of coach selector. So that Yeah. very exciting to hear that. But that I can put that on my resume now. I know. I think it should be the first thing on your resume. No, that's a very, that's a very commonly needed job in the world. Yes. I it on LinkedIn all the time. Not that I'm looking bosses, but uh, think you should forget about instructional coaches. You should sign up for the NBA. Go work for the Lakers or something and tell them you can hire all their coaches. I think they want to hear what I have to say. I mean, I'm a very respected coach selector. Shall we get started? Yes. Let's get started. I have another issue for you. Oh boy, let me hear it. So I think this one's one that we're going to find a lot of the teachers listening to this also struggle with. I know it's something that comes up a lot when I talk to fellow teachers. And that is, how do I get my students to engage with the lesson in a way that they actually enjoy but also actually get something so that I'm not looking at it just a sea of bored faces. Got somebody for me? I do. The word engagement, I promise you, is the most commonly used word in education, in terms of what teachers, principals, even parents, are trying to improve. So you're in good company. I, I, I would, uh, go out on a limb and say, every teacher listening would like some ideas for how to increase engagement. I have an excellent coach for you on this topic I'm sure you do. Erin Anderson Williams is one of our instructional coaches and she is a Educator who is going to be able to really give you some both practical, but also well beneath the surface understanding of what engagement is and how to really raise those levels, in the classroom, but also across the school. listen to what she has to say, and then we'll come back and we'll think about it from a coaching perspective or from an instructional leadership perspective. All right. Well, I am excited to talk to her. So I will see you later and let's bring in Erin. Hi, Erin, thank you so much for joining me today. Dan said that you'd be a great person to talk to about my problems around engagement. So before we get into that, though welcome, and would you please introduce yourself? Hi, Ashley. So great to be with you today. Again, my name is Erin Anderson Williams. My role at SREB is a senior leadership coach, and basically I help principals and teachers engage and support students academically, personal socially, and getting ready for careers to prepare them for a great future. my education and experience are grounded in psychology, educational leadership, teaching, and learning, really to help foster empowerment, achievement, and growth for everyone involved in creating a positive school environment. So I'm so glad that Dan suggested that we meet today. How can I support you? You said a bunch of keywords that I wanted to talk about today in your introduction about you. So I know you're the perfect person to talk to about this. As all teachers do, we all want to be better at empowering ourselves and our students and engaging with our classrooms. And I thought that's a great topic for today because it's the beginning of a new semester and we want to start out right. So do you have any tips or ideas on how to help me be better with engaging with my class? I love it. Great topic, Ashley. And like all schools at this time of the year, people are wondering how can I engage my students even better in our classrooms? And one thing that's really interesting is that student engagement really has three parts that sometimes we overlook. Student engagement is cognitive, It's about the thinking, right? Student learning. We have our lesson plans and our standards that we're teaching students, but we have to engage them cognitively. The second part is behaviorally, right? And we think about how they behave in the class, but also in that lesson planning, what are we wanting them to do with the task that we give them? The third part in this almost all the time, we forget. Students feel certain ways about what they're learning and what they're being asked to do. And sometimes, Ashley, the key to student engagement is really engaging kids in those three spaces. What are you thinking? What are you doing? And how do you feel? How do you feel about that? I like that I've never thought of it exactly that way, but that makes a lot of sense. And I'm excited to see how you're going to explain each of those to me. Sure. Let me give you an example. I was working with a middle school teacher. She taught sixth grade science one year and she came to me distraught because she had this really awesome science lab that she had her students do that particular day. the tears that were on her face when she came into my office clearly let me know that she thought that lesson bombed. And so I asked her, what happened? I told my students we were going to do this lab. I gave them all the instructions. I put them in groups and I let them go. And I said how'd that work out for you? Have you ever tried anything like that, Ashley? Like you had students do an activity and it just didn't go well. Definitely. I've had that happen so many times, especially when I think it's going to be this great lesson and I've Put so much work into planning it. I know one time I thought I had this great idea about a newscast and how, like when you write a paper it's a little bit like a newscast and there's the sports section where you're doing the sports and you have the reporters. And I was like, Oh, I'm going to have the students basically pretend to be a news station. and do the different parts of the news and talk about how that was related to the paper. They did not get it at all. It was a complete failure. They just were like what are we doing? We don't get it. So that's probably the worst time that I was just like, Oh, what am I going to do for this class? Cause this activity is not going anywhere. So when you think about the three areas of student engagement, I just mentioned, what you're describing is the cognitive part, right? And as teachers, We plan lessons and we use activities to teach those lessons, but sometimes we don't think through the great idea that we have and how the kids will respond to our great idea. Planning, cognitively demanding lessons with Explicit behavioral expectations of how to carry out this lesson can make or break the behavioral issues or the off task behaviors that sometimes we see, or even kids just not understanding what they're being asked to do your lesson sounded like a really engaging and exciting opportunity for students to be newscasters. But I wonder if somewhere in communicating it to the students. They cognitively didn't understand what you wanted from them, and I wonder if they really knew what you wanted to do to get to the learning behind the activity. Does that make sense? It does. And I thought about it afterwards. The idea was that they learned how to summarize articles. By acting like a newscaster something that I thought that they would understand, but I don't think that's they don't watch the news like that. So me thinking, Oh, this is so relatable, they'll understand how to do it because it's exactly what they see on the news. But of course, they're not watching the news like that. So it didn't relate cognitively. Like you said, you're exactly right. Absolutely. And sometimes, just starting with Thinking about our lesson and the activity that we want to engage kids in from the student lens will give us so much more information to fill in our lesson so that activity can really be successful. It sounded like it was going to be really fun. And when I think about watching the news and being able to be a newscaster That sounds like really a lot of fun to me, but if I've never watched the news before, I may not know how fun that would be. So something simple that you could do to engage students before doing the activity is ask, how many people have ever watched the news? And for those that haven't watched the news, maybe even pull up a social media clip of a newscaster so that puts everyone on the same page of engagement of what they're going to be tasked to do, and then have conversations about what do you feel about that? And sometimes that asking about the feelings, it feels warm and fuzzy , but we forget that feelings and thinking go hand in hand. Have you ever had a student that you've asked to read something and you notice that they Just don't want to? don't engage in the reading.. I definitely had that issue. You know, Sometimes the root of that is I don't feel confident in being able to read this. And that's not for all kids, but for some kids, there's a feeling about reading that's hindering them from behaving in the task of reading what you've given them. So finding ways to, gauge How students feel about certain things that are tied to learning gives that you as the teacher a little bit more information about how to put things in place that will make students feel Open to trying to do the things that you're trying to ask them to do. back about the teacher, the science teacher that was doing the activity. Obviously she felt a certain way because she's in full coming to my, my office. So I asked her, how'd you feel about the lesson? It was a failure. Well, Guess what? The lesson itself was a great lesson, but the execution just didn't go the way that she wanted it to. And when I continue to engage her with questions about the lesson at the root of her tears, She felt like a failure because the activity she tried to do with her students didn't go the way that she planned. So part of our conversation was me reminding her that she as a teacher was not a failure because she really did plan a highly engaging activity that set itself up for students to have fun with the learning, but the execution details, we needed to spend a little bit more. Cognitive time planning how to make that lesson a success and I saw the tears stop and she perked up and we got to really sit down and have conversation about how to plan and prepare for student engagement in all three of the areas, but not just for the students. Also for her as the teacher. So Ashley, let me ask you about, having kids do this newscasting, let's break it down into three areas. Cognitively uh, for the instruction part, what did you want kids to take away from the activity? So The goal was that I wanted them to be better at summarizing articles without feeling they have to put every single piece of information from the article in their paper. And so the idea was newscasters do that when they're telling a story or a sportscaster when they're talking about a game. They don't Sit there and say, in inning one batter one, this happened in inning one batter two and go through the whole game or whatever sport they're covering. They summarize it. They just show the key highlights. And I wanted them to do that in their papers. And I thought that'd be a fun way to get them to do that. Awesome. Well, Guess what, Ashley, even that foundation of the goal that you had for them cognitively, you may not have realized you also had a really great goal for them behaviorally to pretend to be a newscaster, to get to the cognitive information. That right there is a great strategy for engaging students in your classroom. My next question to you is, how do you think they felt at the end of the lesson when it kind of didn't go well? I could tell just from their faces. I think at this point in the semester when I did that activity, we had done enough activities that they had trust in me that I was going to have fun activities and they were also going to learn from them and do better on their paper. But at the end of this one, I could see that they were just confused. We didn't get what we were supposed to learn from it. I do feel like they thought we know you must have had something but we didn't get it and they were frustrated because they didn't get it. And I was frustrated because they didn't get it, which was my fault, not theirs, but I was still frustrated. Absolutely. And one thing that I love, in listening to you is that you were able to identify the student's feelings, but you naturally also were able to identify your own. You know, sometimes when we execute our lessons, we're really excited about it. And then when it doesn't go well, we're frustrated and sometimes confused, like, why didn't that go well? And the natural human response. As teachers, I've done it. Blame the kids. What's wrong with the kids? Why didn't they get my really great lesson? But when we look at it really closely, Hmm, maybe they didn't get my lesson because they were just as confused as I was. So the kids being confused and frustrated and you being a little confused and frustrated is not necessarily a bad thing because thankfully we get another day. To reengage our students in the lesson and the learning that we are trying to accomplish in the first place. You know, the school year, it is not one day and done. We have an entire year to build relationships with our kids, to communicate our expectations, to reflect and to revisit. But another piece of student engagement. is including our students in giving us feedback about how the lessons that we're providing and the opportunities that we're presenting to them makes them think, behave, and feel. And then we can use their information to help make sure that our lessons are landing for the goals that we have for them, which is to provide fun and engaging lessons, which is also what they want. Have you ever thought about engaging your students in giving feedback about a lesson after you've implemented one? I have had times where, so for example, the final paper of the semester might be a revision or something like that. And I have them write the assignment. They, as a class, come up with what is a revision, what does it mean to do, what is this. But that's before the lesson. They do it from the start. I don't think that I've ever done it after, like when a lesson fails. coming back to them and being like, Hey, that didn't work. What would have worked and getting their feedback that way. But I would be interested in trying that. You know, And sometimes that piece really fortifies the trust that you've already begun establishing with the kids. Because like you mentioned earlier, that throughout the year you start to develop rapport and trust with students. And then when a day happens where a lesson doesn't land, sometimes coming back as the teacher and owning the moment where confusion and frustration happened in the classroom can fortify that student engagement and positive environment in your classroom and set you up for greater success for the next lesson. It actually builds rapport with the students that one, Oh, my teacher's pretty great, but my teacher's not perfect. And my teacher sometimes makes mistakes. Like I make mistakes and my teacher owned up to the mistake. And look, we recovered from it. When I think back again to the teacher that I mentioned to you after talking through how she felt about the lesson and really looking at her ask of students and the behavioral parts of them doing the lab that she wanted them to do. When we spent a little bit time talking about how do we recover for the next day, she was still a little fearful that her students would think. Bad of her if she owned the moment that that lesson didn't go wrong. And the contrary happened. We spent a little bit of time together. We talked through how she could start the next day with her students and believe it or not, they laughed about how that lesson went wrong. And she engaged the students in giving her ideas of how the lesson could have been better. And she also got information of how she can communicate more clearly her expectations to students. And then they tried the lesson again. And what do you think happened, Ashley? going to cross my fingers and hope that the lesson was a lot better when she did that. It absolutely was. And I was excited because she came running to my office at the end I mean, No tears, bright smile. Guess what? The lesson actually worked. My kids enjoyed it and she enjoyed it. Sometimes we think about student engagement. We forget about how important it is as teachers that we should get to enjoy the teaching and learning experience. you know, I talked to teachers all over the country and they love their students so much that they work hard and they find really engaging lessons and they want their activities to go well. And all they want is for their students to have a great experience at school. But sometimes the experiences are not so great for the teacher. They're frustrated. They're confused. They're sad. And we have to spend some time saying, it's okay for you to also enjoy this process and student engagement. It's a process. You're learning people. You're learning your student. You're learning yourself and you're learning how to engage. Cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally for the purpose of successful teaching and learning. And at the end of the day, that's why we're in school. I really like that, and I really like the idea of trying the lesson again instead of giving up on it. That tends to be something that I do, is I'm very much Try whatever comes to your mind, and whatever works, works, and whatever doesn't, and you throw that away. But, sometimes there might be some good ideas in there that just didn't work because you didn't try. You didn't do all the things that you just said, you didn't engage with the student, you didn't ask them about it, you didn't figure out what they already knew and how you could help them, and then you just give up on something that could turn into something great if you Workshop it a little bit. And I really liked the idea of sometimes if something doesn't go the way I want it to do, I'm really bad about saying, I have to get to the next thing that I know is going to work and let's move full speed ahead until we get to this next lesson that was going to be engaging in that way, I'll get us back on track instead of taking some time to be like, Hey, how could I do what I already did better instead of moving on to the next thing. So I really liked that. That was very helpful. I love it. And sometimes, you know, we think about it. We have pacing guides. We have curriculum maps. We only have a short period of time in a year to get through all of the standards that we're teaching students in our different content areas. So every single activity, maybe we can't redo. But there are parts and pieces of activities like hello students. So yesterday when I gave you guys some instructions, I noticed that you guys were confused. How could I have given you the instructions better so that you would know exactly what I was asking of you and then spend a few minutes, not 30 minutes, but five minutes at the beginning of a new lesson and listen to the students and then practice. doing the thing that they said would help them, that will also help you find success So, you know, I don't want you to think that every single lesson that maybe doesn't go the way that you plan it, that we really have time to do them all over. But there are aspects of starting a lesson, ending a lesson and engaging students that we can build on throughout the year. And then once you get into a flow with your students and you have that rapport relationally, You're able to engage feedback from them and they're able to give feedback and the next thing you know, everybody's loving the teaching and learning that's happening in your classroom. That's a great point. And I also, so when I give up on an activity, I tend to give up on it completely. But even like you said, If there's not enough time for me to say, Hey, I have to workshop this and fix it the next day in class. If I just next year when I'm doing that, when I get to that same unit, I can learn from those mistakes too. I don't have to just do it in that same class. Absolutely. Thank you so much for this has been so helpful, and I do want to make sure that I Got what you wanted me to get from this lesson. So I've been taking notes as you've been talking and I came away with 10 little takeaways from what you said. I organized these a little bit by from before the lesson starts to after the lessons over is how I did it. So let's see if we're on the same page here. First thing before I do a lesson, I should figure out what I want to happen in it. I should know what I want them to learn. And so then I should give more cognitive planning time instead of just planning the fun parts. I should make sure that what we're doing is actually going to cognitively help them. And then, before I start the lesson, what I want to start doing, based off of what you said, is asking them what they already know about the actual activity or the topic itself. For example, in my newscaster one, it probably would have been better if I had asked them, how many people watch the news, like you suggested, or anything like that, if I'd realized before we even started that using that as my example wasn't going to help because they didn't know news. It would have really changed the way I did that lesson. When they don't know something, for example, if they don't know the news, demonstrate. I could have shown a few clips from the news or found something on social media, like you said, that would help them see what it was before I had them do it when they have no knowledge of how that thing or activity works. And throughout the lesson, gauge how they're feeling, how it's working for them. Are they getting it cognitively, behaviorally? Feeling it, are they enjoying it? And then, after the lesson, be able to admit my mistakes. I don't have to be perfect if the lesson wasn't perfect. I have to be able to admit my mistakes. And once I've realized that maybe a lesson didn't work the way I wanted it to, get some student feedback. Ask them what they thought of the lesson, and how it could have been better. And what I could have done differently. Which goes hand in hand with admitting I can make mistakes. And then finally when time permits retry and if time doesn't permit retry parts of it, and my last two are about me. Remember that I'm not a failure just because a lesson didn't go the way I wanted it. I'm not a failure and that yes, students should enjoy the process and they should learn from the process, but so should I, so that's what I got from what you said to me today. Your takeaways are Okay. So that bell that we just heard means we're almost out of time. Before you leave though, what's my homework for the day? right, Ashley, well, you have already reflected on the lesson that didn't go so well. So my homework for you is to reflect on a lesson that you've already done that you loved and felt that it went perfectly. Do you remember the handout that I sent Yes, I do. And I will be putting that in the show notes for today for anybody listening, you can download it and find it there so that you can go ahead and do this homework with me. Awesome. Well, Download the handout. I put a little template in there for reflection around activities or lessons that you're creating or have already done. And there are spaces to reflect cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally for that lesson. So reflect on something you did really well, because I want you to see you are already doing these things. The best thing you can do is build on it. All right. That was great. I'm very excited to try these tips that you just gave me. Thank you so much for coming today. I've really enjoyed this talk. Thank you so much, Ashley. I appreciate you. Have a great rest of the year. Oh, thanks. You too. Bye. Bye. Ashley, what really stuck out with what Erin had to say there? What is it, what is something that you heard her say that you really want to zero in on as you go back into your class? So I really like that. She broke it down, not just to the cognitive level. It's so easy to focus on. Are they learning something? But she looked at or told me to look at the behavioral level and how they feel. And I think that's really important to kind of look at that psychology too and something that's so easy to forget. So I was really happy with that answer. Yeah, definitely. about not just how are you participating, but actually what are you thinking? What are you feeling? What are you doing? Think about all of those components. Which brings me to my first coaching lens when it comes to engagement. One of the most important aspects of leadership is clear expectations. That's not just for coaching. But it's for being a principal. It's also as a teacher, teachers out there know how to clearly share with students what's expected what she's doing is she's defining engagement. I'm as a teacher, you know, I'm sure you've heard, you know, different talk about how hard it is to engage students, but what she's done as a coach is she's helped her teachers to define what engagement means before you try to get students, dancing and singing and on their tables, giving some kind of exciting version of the Declaration of Independence. All of that might be engaging, but are they thinking? Right? Are they something that's aligned to the standard? So, just what I heard her talk about is making clear expectations. Teacher clarity is one of the best things we can do. so, as a coach, or as an instructional leader, making a definition across your school about what engagement is, it so much easier for teachers to actually put that into place. Does that make sense? That sounds like really great advice to me. The other thing that I heard her talk about, which is so, so critical from any coach who's been in this business for a while is permission to make mistakes. Permission to fail. fact, not even permission, but. Understanding that there is no learning without that. And she talked about her teacher who came back crying and da da da da and was so stressed out. And it was like, it's okay. That's how we learn. There is no learning without making mistakes. And she's teaching that to her teachers. what I love is you can see that down into her students. as a coach, as a coach, she's building that culture of learning. Have you been in schools or places like that where give you permission to make mistakes? Yes, I've been really lucky to get to be in environments like that. And it's so much better than when you don't, when you feel the pressure of everything has to go right at all times or who knows what's going to happen. So you're able to be a lot more creative and do a lot more when you do have that pressure. Protection of it doesn't, if I make a mistake, it's okay. In, Silicon Valley, they talk about failing forward, which is kind of like now a trite and sort of like, not really appreciated term, but it used to be something that they would say, but the concept makes sense. That you want to be able to make mistakes that's how you'll get better. And that's, you know, how you can engage kids is by telling them, I want you to screw this up. I want you to get the answers wrong because that's how you're learning. just love the way she talked about that and showed that in her, in her process. So that's my coaching reflection for today. Great job. As always, Oh, well, thank you. I look forward to hearing your problems next time. So we can find another great person to help you out. I feel like I've been teaching therapy each week coming with my problems, but I'm glad you're here to walk me through all my issues. We can, we can get some sponsors, like, better help. yes, sounds good. Let's call them up. All right. Well, I will see you next week. All right. Bye. Thank you all for listening. Please make sure you subscribe to the Class Act podcast so that you don't miss any of these great lessons. And in the meantime, follow us on social media. You can find us on Facebook at SREB SchoolImprovement or on Twitter slash X or Instagram, both at SREBeducation.