Engagement doesn't come only from academic content, but it comes from child's own ability to self regulate, applied skills.
From a child’s perspective, school, extracurricular activities and home are part of the continuous experience of life.
From the perspective of teachers, coaches and parents, those experiences may seem more differentiated and are thus treated separately.
Kids internalize academics when they are also encouraged to develop outside the classroom. Do we really encourage our kids for self worth apart from academic motivation...
I have always known how important it is that kids know their teacher believes in them; I knew this as a teacher and more recently became more acutely aware of it as a parent.
One of the first steps we need to take, as a nation, is to move away from outdated methods of fixed mindset grouping and communicate to the children that they can achieve.
We need to communicate positive expectations to children by using encouraging words, and it is easy to do this with kids who appear motivated, who learn easily, or who are quick. But it is even more important to communicate positive beliefs and expectations to the kids who are slow, appear unmotivated, or struggle. It is also important to realize that the speed at which children appear to grasp concepts is not indicative of their intelligence. As hard as it is, it is important to not have any preconceptions about who will work well on a task and understand quickly. We must be open at all times to any child's working really well. Some kids give the impression that anything asked for them is a constant struggle, and they may ask a lot of questions or keep saying they are stuck, but they are just hiding their potential and are likely to be suffering from a fixed mindset.
You can be the person who turns things around for them and liberates their learning path in all aspects. It usually takes just one person—a person whom the child will never forget and follow unconditionally.
In education, child engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that children show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education.
Generally speaking, the concept of child engagement is predicated on the belief that learning improves when children are inquisitive, interested, or inspired, and that learning tends to suffer when children are bored, dispassionate, disaffected, or otherwise disengaged.
Engagement, relevance, and fun are great, but make sure there is observable evidence that children are learning when integrating technology.
