Engage by Eve

Engage by Eve - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

Engage. It is a word with several meanings, and is used in many different contexts. It can mean to be promised in marriage to someone. It can mean to start a battle. It can also mean to pay attention to someone and be involved with them. In the classroom, engaging is very important. If a teacher is not engaged with the students, and if the students are not engaged with the teacher, it is a lot harder to learn. I am speaking from experience. In my three semesters attending college, I have had only three teachers whom I really learned a lot from. These professors were very different from each other, and even had very different teaching styles. But the one thing they had in common was that they engaged the class. Participation was a huge part of their classes, and they worked hard to get each class member to ask questions, state their opinion, or offer up a new viewpoint. These teachers saw that everyone has something to offer the class, and they developed and encouraged that.

One of the biggest ways we can power up our learning is by talking about it. If we are in a nutrition class learning about how to track our calories, it helps to tell our other classmates and teacher what we ate that day and how many calories our food contained. Even if I am in a class such as chemistry where opinion doesn’t really have a place, I can grasp concepts better if I say them out loud. In my experience, the best teachers are the ones who know how to guide students to participate in the best ways to allow for optimal learning and knowledge retention.

Students pay more attention to what the teacher or professor is saying if the educator is engaging another student. When a teacher asks a class member a question, other student’s heads often snap up, showing their newfound attentiveness and interest in what the teacher is saying.

In short, if you want your students to learn, be an engaging teacher. Talk to them, and let them talk to you. Let yourself be relaxed and comfortable enough that your students will want to talk to you and learn from you. Listen to them, and they will listen to you. (Word count 401).