Pitch

Entertain, Engage and Educate PT 3

So we have our objective so now it’s time to take a step toward that.

I think the order of entertain and engage can be interchangeable. I put entertain first because it comes the most naturally to me. I also think it’s possible to entertain and not engage and indeed to not extend that to something meaningful on the otherside. I’m in the business of meaning; I don’t want to entertain for fun’s sake. I’d like to entertain in order to engage.

How?

Well, that’s an interesting. The word entertain might have a connotation of silliness or of kids being off task. Of course nobody want’s that, but I think it’s important to ask what ‘off task’ really means or what does that actually look like. I think an important first step in how to entertain is to loosen our expectations of what your student’s ‘should’ be doing.

More on that tomorrow

Surprise and delight

Variety is attractive. It’s an effective way of keeping attention in the classroom. The great news is, it doesn’t take a lot to manufacture variety. Simply asking a new question can reveal new and exciting ways to bring your next learning session alive:

How could I pleasantly surprise my students today?

How can I bring delight into the room today?

Pacing and Leading PT 4

Check out the other steps of this series:

Part 1, part 2 and part 3

STEP 6 ADJUST: You’ve successfully paced their current state and began leading to the desired state, it’s time to adjust more and more toward where you want them to go. It’s important to say here, this is isn’t a magic trick or some woo woo thing- this is how humans behave. The saying goes that people tend to like people who are like them or who they’d aspire to be like. This tool of pacing and leading maximises this element of human nature.

STEP 7 REWARD: Human’s like to be rewarded. We have an entire nervous system set up to respond pretty strongly to reward. If we’re hungry and we eat something, pleasure signals zoom through our system to say a big “YES, that was good that helps us survive”. So we’re acutely aware of pleasure and reward. Most humans like praise and attention so this is a good way to reward when you’re pacing and leading a group. The tricky thing is different people have different beliefs about what being rewarded looks like. Generally, simply acknowledging people warmly with a look can be enough. Essentially what you want to do is ignore the behavior that isn’t where you want them, and shine a good feeling on the stuff you want.

STEP 8 END STATE: After repeating the cycle of pacing, leading and rewarding you’ll eventually get the group to where you want them. It might not be perfectly as you imagined, but provided you were listening attentively, pacing and leading with pristine accuracy you should see pretty dramatic results in the group’s state.

There you have it, my favourite tool! I find this a much more elegant way of bringing people around to a state that is most conducive to the work you’d like to do with them.