Tag Archives: student engagement

Emotionally invested

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“When students are emotionally invested in the learning process, commitment and performance will typically go up. Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist who studies learning and creativity, said, “If we want to see what young people are capable of achieving intellectually and creatively, we have to engage them in activities that matter to them.” By linking students to their personal interests and their own creativity, they can explore questions like: What do I love? What am I good at? What problems can we solve? What do we want to create? Why is this important? How will we figure this out? What might we contribute to the world? It’s within this productive struggle and its inherent ambiguity that students can build a self-inventory of creative and adaptive capabilities. These life-building skills will transfer beyond the project and the classroom. Students can discover what’s possible for themselves and what they’re capable of.”

~ Robert Attwell, Student-Powered Inquiry-Based Learning

Robert visited our school last year and wrote this article, published last month in Canadian Teacher Magazine. (See a PDF of the article here.)

A couple days ago 5 pre-service teachers from Simon Fraser University visited our school for the day and I had them end the day learning about some of the inquiries that on of our Grade 12 students, Jacob, did while he was with us since Grade 9. Afterwards, I asked Jacob, what’s something that he really liked about coming to Inquiry Hub, and what’s something he thinks he might have missed coming to such a small school?

Jacob chose only to speak about one thing. He said, ‘If I didn’t come here I’d never have had the opportunity to do all these projects, or I would have had to do them on my own time… except I probably wouldn’t have had the time to do them.’ Essentially, he has had school time to work on projects and inquiries that have mattered to him.

I think that should be something all schools spend a bit more time doing.

Student involvement in meetings

When I recently quoted part of a post I wrote back in 2007, I shared this, “why do teachers have parent meetings about a teenage student’s education and not have the student there too?”

I can understand certain circumstances where a student might be too young, or the subject matter too sensitive for a student to participate in a meeting, but I’d guess from about grade 6 onwards, over 9/10 times it would be better if a parent-teacher meeting was a parent-student-teacher meeting. The ultimate question is, whose education is it? The students. So shouldn’t the student be part of the conversation? Shouldn’t the student see their parent and teacher both care and want what’s best for them… and are ‘on the same page’?

With that in mind, I think it’s awesome that at Inquiry Hub, students participate in Parent Advisory Council (PAC) meetings. We had one last night (online) and 3 students showed up, along with 18 parents. Last month one of them was on the agenda.

This started early on when our school was new. I began sending emails usually sent only to parents, to students as well. So when I mentioned the PAC meeting in an email a couple students asked if they could come too. When they came, the parents accepted their presence with open arms, and a tradition was started.

I can honestly say that students have only added value to the meetings. No downside. Parents love it. I love it. Students feel empowered. Students belong in conversations about their education, and their school.