Banish Boredom!Building Student Engagement

Through The Six Skills of Interest

To awaken interest and kindle enthusiasm is

the sure way to teach easily and successfully.

• Tyron Edwards

A presentation from

Dr. Z‟s House of Fun

Wilkins-O’RileyZinn

zinnw@sou.eduhttp:www.wilkinsorileyzinn.word

press.com/

There are no uninteresting things;

there are only uninterested people.

• Gilbert Keith Chesterton

When is learning fun for

you?

Share your insights with

others. What ideas and

themes emerge?

Six Themes of Fun in

Learning(Zinn 2004, 2008)

C • Choice

R• Relevance

E• Engagement

A• Active Learning

T• Teacher Attitude

E• Eiredaramac(Camaraderie)

High School Survey of Student

Engagement (HSSSE), 2007

81,000 high school students in twenty-six states were surveyed by Indiana University Center for

Evaluation and Education Policy.

Seventy-five percent reported being bored in

class (Yazzie-Mintz, 2007).

An international survey of 17,000,000 fifteen-year-

olds in thirty-two countries noted that forty-eight

percent reported school boredom (OECD, 2004),

with numbers as high as eighty-three percent

reported in some countries.

DRUDGERY:There is a formula for drudgery in William Carl

Rudiger‟s (1932) book, Teaching Procedures. If

interest is missing, he asserts, almost any kind of

activity can be boring and unpleasant.

The greatest happiness comes from being vitally

interested in something that excites all your

energies.• Walter Annenberg

Many students develop finely-honed skills

of disinterest, including the ability to feign

interest in order to pass their classes.

What does it mean to be a genuinely

interested learner?

What are the qualities of an interested

learner?

What is the evidence that a learner is

interested?

He thought I actually gave a damn about

the class. All I wanted to do was pass.

•Overheard in the student union, 2008

Five Minds for the Future

• Howard Gardner, from Mike Baker (October 13, 2006),

“What type of minds to nurture?”

Disciplined: master academic subject, craft, profession; apply oneself to learning.Synthesizing: absorb, sift, select, make sense of vast amounts of data.Creating: forge new ground; find new ways of doing things.Respectful: recognize and respect the “otherness” of those different from ourselves.Ethical: actively striving to do good; trying to make the world a better place.

An interested learner…List generated by students, November 2009

• is deeply and seriously engaged in class assignments and activities

• is curious, questions, wonders• connects studies to life

• makes interdisciplinary connections• is aware of self, others, the world; observes; listens

• cares, works hard, does quality work • thinks and thinks about her/his thinking• is creative; goes beyond expectations• believes s/he can make a difference

• puts thought into action• is contemplative and reflective

• is not complacent• is not bored; is interesting

• is open to learning and believes s/he can learn from everything

• is aware of biases• values process and product

• is playful• is committed to and values learning

Skills of Interest help

promote intentional learning

Studentto

Learnerto

Lifelong learner

Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They

must learn to think and act for

themselves—and be free.

• Cesar Chavez

Learning abilities identified at Harvard as

essential for adapting to a rapidly changing

world of work include abilities to:

define problems without a guide.

ask hard questions which challenge prevailing

assumptions.

work in teams without guidance.

work absolutely alone

persuade others that your course is the right one.

discuss issues and techniques in public with an eye

to reaching decisions about policy.

conceptualize and reorganize information into new

patterns.

pull what you need quickly from masses of irrelevant

data.

think inductively, deductively, and dialectically.

attack problems heuristically.

• from John Taylor Gatto (2005) “The Curriculum of Necessity

or What Must an Educated Person Know?”

CHOICE:Something stopped me in school a little

bit. Anything that I’m not interested in, I can’t even

feign interest. • Quentin Tarantino

Choice

Skill of Interest: I know how I learn and I understand that this may not be the same in

every context. I actively seek opportunities to maximize my

learning by integrating my interests and passions into my

coursework.

RELEVANCE:The shepherd always tried to persuade the

sheep that their interest and his own are the same. • • •

Krister Stendhal

Relevance

Skill of Interest: I find purpose

and connections among

things I'm studying. I connect

personal resonance and

pragmatic reality. I know who

I am and what interests me.

ENGAGEMENT:For an interest to be rewarding, one must

pay in discipline and dedication, especially through the

difficult or boring stages which are inevitably

encountered. • Mira Komarovsky

Engagement

Skill of Interest: I attend class and deliberately find ways to be

actively interested. I care about my learning and am truly present through thoughtful interaction in and out of class. I apply course content to my life and to other

courses.

Adult Learning

(Malcolm Knowles, 1990)

Adults want to know why they are

learning something.

Adults need to learn experientially.

Adults approach learning as problem-

solving.

Adults learn best when the topic is of

immediate value.

ACTIVE LEARNING: Develop interest in life as you see it;

the people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich,

simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and

interesting people. Forget yourself. • Henry Miller

Active Learning

Skill of Interest: I don't just

attend class; I am an integral

part of making the class

interesting because

I am interested. I seek out

additional information related

to what I am learning.

TEACHER ATTITUDE: There are two levers for moving men:

interest and fear. • Napoleon Bonaparte

Enthusiasm glows, radiates, permeates and immediately

captures everyone’s interest. • Paul J. Meyer

In your interactions

with students—in

and out of the

classroom—what do

you do that works?

Six Keys of Dropout

Prevention

Wilkins-O‟RileyZinn, 2008

Relevance: I have reasons to be here that are meaningful to me.

Rigor: Expectations are high, and work is scaffolded to support my achievement.

Recognition: My efforts are seen, appreciated, and celebrated.

Respect: I am treated like a unique and valuable person; my interests are respected.

Relationships: There are people here who care about me and about whom I can care.

Responsibility: I am supported in the developmental processes of becoming an interested and intellectually responsible lifelong learner and can make meaningful contributions here.

Mattering(Schlossberg, Lynch &Chickering, 1989)

•Attention: students believe that they are recognized/seen as individuals. Instructors can address this through comments on papers, encouraging students to get to know one another, and learning student names.

•Importance: students believe that instructors/advisors care about what the student's goals are. Updated information is provided, advising goes beyond the formulaic and is linked to student needs. Absences are noticed.

•Dependence: students feel that they are an integral part of class and that others depend on them. They are not allowed to be invisible in discussions and other class interactions.

•Ego-extension: students believe that others will be proud of their accomplishments.

•Appreciation: students are recognized for who they are and what they have done, receiving credit for life experience, for example. The multiple life roles that adult learners are juggling are seen and taken into account. Learners are trusted.

Teacher Attitude

Skill of Interest: What makes teaching fun?I put myself in

the place of the teacher

and make my interest

apparent. I go beyond

requirements and produce

quality work.

What makes teaching fun?

When it comes to student

behaviors, these things are

a drag and these things

are a delight.

Hi. I’m at the grocery store. I forgot we had class this

afternoon. Can you meet with me tomorrow to go

over what I missed? • Actual voicemail left on Zinn’s

phone, winter 2008

Drag!

oppositional talk • blaming • whining •

sucking up • not reading assigned

materials • absenteeism • lack of

thought • laziness (especially mental) •

negativity • apathy • mediocrity •

tardiness • irresponsibility • meanness •

not doing assignments • late work •

bullying • excuse-making • lack of

consideration • disrespect • shoddy

work • excessive cynicism • lack of

caring • inattention in class

Delight?

If I were queen of

education, there‟d

only be two grades:

cares and doesn‟t

care. • W-OZ

CAMARADERIE: Show interest in all people, not just those

from whom you want something. Making people feel

important and good about themselves is just the right

thing to say. • Bo Bennett

Camaraderie

Skill of Interest: I talk with others in and out of class--instructors and

classmates. I get involved in clubs, study groups, sports,

student government, and/or other activities. I am interested learning about other people and their cultures and I know how to listen and be a friend.

Discovery Skills of Innovation

From “How Do Innovators Think,” by Bronwyn Fryer (Sept.

28, 2009), Harvard Business Review, describing a large-

scale, six-year study of creative executives conducted

by researchers Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen:

1) Associating, a “cognitive skill that allows creative

people to make connections across seemingly

unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.” Identified

as the “key skill.”

2) Questioning, the “ability to ask „what if,‟ ‟why,‟ and

„why not‟ questions that challenge the status quo.”

3) Observation, the “ability to closely observe details,

particularly the details of people‟s behavior.”

4) Experimentation, “trying on new experiences and

exploring new worlds.”

5) Networking, “with smart people who have little in

common with them, but from whom they can learn.”

What can you do to help

create student interest—and

engagement—in learning?

Home•Work/BrainPlay

Designing Home•Work assignments that encourage students

to think about course concepts and content in

unexpected ways is one way to encourage them to make

connections. Such assignments can also build classroom

community, both face-to-face and online.

Home•Work also encourages imaginative, creative, and

divergent thinking, and builds skills of interest and

innovation.

What’s one Home•Work assignment you could use with your

students to build their interest in your course and/or connect it to their lives?

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to

think about besides homework. • Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann

IN•FINITO!

The true secret of happiness lies in taking

genuine interest in the details of daily life.

• William Morris