James Alan Sturtevant - Hacking Engagement: 50 Tips & Tools To Engage Teachers and Learners Daily (Hack Learning Series, #7)

Introduction

Flashback to College

I learned a powerful lesson about engagement in September of 1980. I was embarking on my sophomore year at Muskingum, a beautiful little liberal arts college in Southeastern Ohio. Attending a liberal arts school meant I had to take a well-rounded and diverse slate of classes. Im a humanities guy, but I still had to take math and sciencerequirements that truly dogged me. On a warm and muggy late summer morning, I strolled into geology. I had selected a course friends referred to as Rocks for Jocks because Id been told it was, by far, the easiest class in the hard sciences. I plopped down into a seat and waited, thinking, This class has the potential to bore the hell out of me and implode my GPA .

What happened next was transformational. In traipsed a diminutive professor. He wore a flannel shirt and old khakis. Out of his face erupted a tremendous black beard that ended below his collar bones. He was relaxed and informal, but he seemed a bit persnickety. As he launched into his initial monologue, it became clear that he had a droll sense of humor. He described the problems inherent in being a married geologist: You see, to me, a billion years is a blink of an eye. So its very tough for me to get excited about being fifteen minutes late to meet my wife.

I was so relieved that I was going to be taught by a scientist with a personality, a scientist with spunk and humor. Over the next month, I grew to love going to geology. The class was fun; the prof was hilarious. I ended up earning a B.

In my geology class, I bonded with the professor. Our relationship altered my experience of the class so that instead of being so bored and disengaged that I failed to learn, I chose to participate and absorb the content. This story may have a familiar ring. Many people have been reluctant learners who ended up liking a class they feared because of a cool, engaging teacher.

Hacking Engagement: 50 Tips and Tools to Engage Teachers and Learners Daily will be your roadmap to create an engaging class that your learners, even the reluctant ones, will love. Rest assured, this book contains a bevy of relationship directives, but thats not all. It also includes awesome tech tools and innovative strategies to make your class irresistible.

Each of the fifty hacks begins with a thorough explanation of a problem that teachers commonly face. Then I offer a detailed solution that anyone can easily use to engage students. Ill finish up by giving you concrete steps to implement the solution the next day.

I want to assure you that Im one of you. Im not an administrator. Im not a consultant. Im not a professor. Im a teacher, and Im in the trenches with you. My mission is to figure out how I can engage my students in my public school classroom. Its a mission Ive been on for over three decades.

When I was in the process of crafting this book, I launched the Hacking Engagement podcast, which mirrors and supplements these pages. As you read, youll frequently encounter QR codes that will connect you to episodes. If youre new to QR codes, no worries. Hack 1 will show you exactly how to use them. These codes will enable you to hear my voice and the voices of some fascinating contributors to Hacking Engagement. Some QR codes will direct you to other bonus content that will help you become an engagement expert. Now, point your QR code app to Image 0.1 and youll be whisked away to a virtual space where you can hear more about my quest to help you bond with your students tomorrow.