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One of the biggest challenges public middle school teachers face is the lack of engagement of students. Not only is this time of life rife with internal hormonal changes for students, but it is full of social upheaval as well. How they are viewed by their peers drives adolescent decision making, so often what they wear is far higher on their priority lists than what they are studying in school. The state driven science content standards in 7th and 8th grade require students to learn a multitude of facts that have little perceived relevance to their daily lives. The history of the Earth, the difference between speed and velocity, and reproduction of plants are concepts to which few middle school students can directly relate. As teachers, we do our best to point out how knowing this information will help them in the future but frankly, the blank stares, disruptive behavior and lack of quality work are obvious signs that students are not engaged.
Even high achieving students who aim to please and have excellent work ethics seem to be disengaged from much of the science content and rarely choose to pursue the more challenging options many teachers provide. They are cooperative and will complete all assignments with the goal of earning perfect scores, but are they just going through the motions or do they actually care enough about the topic to fully absorb and apply it to new situations? These students are experts at learning teacher expectations and will participate fully in class but unless the teacher is tapping into their higher level cognitive abilities, they get bored and will mentally check out.
The lowest achieving students are obviously the most difficult to engage. By the time they reach middle school, they have a long record of just squeaking by academically and are way behind in the acquisition of many basic skills. They have learned to cope by completing the bare minimum of work, copying from classmates or giving up altogether and becoming behavior problems. After all, to many adolescents, it’s better to appear bad than stupid so they act out to cover their deficiencies (Katch, 1988, p.34). Many will keep quiet in class, hoping the teacher won’t call on them and are resigned to fail. With the rising class sizes public schools face, it is way too easy for many students to fall through the cracks. Often times these students have the ability to succeed academically but due to home life or social turmoil, they are in survival mode and doing well in school is a low priority. How can teachers better engage these students so they are more successful in school?
Even high achieving students who aim to please and have excellent work ethics seem to be disengaged from much of the science content and rarely choose to pursue the more challenging options many teachers provide. They are cooperative and will complete all assignments with the goal of earning perfect scores, but are they just going through the motions or do they actually care enough about the topic to fully absorb and apply it to new situations? These students are experts at learning teacher expectations and will participate fully in class but unless the teacher is tapping into their higher level cognitive abilities, they get bored and will mentally check out.
The lowest achieving students are obviously the most difficult to engage. By the time they reach middle school, they have a long record of just squeaking by academically and are way behind in the acquisition of many basic skills. They have learned to cope by completing the bare minimum of work, copying from classmates or giving up altogether and becoming behavior problems. After all, to many adolescents, it’s better to appear bad than stupid so they act out to cover their deficiencies (Katch, 1988, p.34). Many will keep quiet in class, hoping the teacher won’t call on them and are resigned to fail. With the rising class sizes public schools face, it is way too easy for many students to fall through the cracks. Often times these students have the ability to succeed academically but due to home life or social turmoil, they are in survival mode and doing well in school is a low priority. How can teachers better engage these students so they are more successful in school?