Student Engagement is a key component of Shipley’s research-based approach to student well-being. Defined as “Consistently experiencing deep, rewarding immersion into meaningful work and academic pursuits in ways that elevate performance and produce levels of well-being and fulfillment,” it is also essential to educational excellence.

How do we achieve this at Shipley? It starts with building a foundation of belonging, community, and trusting relationships within the classroom, strengthened by offering students choice and autonomy, and fueled by teachers' passion for teaching and learning. 

In this first piece of our series on Engagement, five teachers and curricular leaders share their thoughts on the subject. Each educator, from a different division and subject area, offers insights into how they foster engagement in their classrooms. Here’s what we learned from each of them.

Building relationships and creating a foundation of trust are key to students’ ability to engage in the risk-taking and mistake-making that is part of every math classroom. If students do not feel comfortable, they might not participate fully in the learning. Mrs. McDermott shares the importance of how this happens in the Lower School. “The first six weeks of school is when teachers and students establish a positive classroom community and build trust. Clear expectations are established, and during morning meeting times, the relationships within a class are strengthened every day. Classes play games and participate in group activities to build connections with each other. Once these trusted relationships and spaces are established, students feel connected and comfortable. As a result, students are willing to take risks and participate in class. In math, we make it known that mistakes are a positive part of learning. Usually, everyone buys in and is supportive."

Some of the ways we create engaged and interested Lower School math students include:

In Lila Corgan’s 8th grade English class, she believes that being vulnerable can help boost learning and engagement. She seeks to help her students allow themselves this vulnerability in her classroom by building a foundation of trust so students are able to fully engage in classroom conversations. At the start of this year, Mrs. Corgan asked her students four questions: “What does it mean to be vulnerable?”, “Why is it hard to be vulnerable?”, “How can being vulnerable help boost learning and engagement in the classroom?”, and “Some ‘toxic thoughts’ that can prevent me from being vulnerable in class include . . .” 

Students answered these independently and anonymously, looked at each other’s responses, then discussed their observations as a class. They found that many students’ responses had a negative connotation of the word vulnerable: fear, weakness, exposure to being hurt, you don’t know what people are thinking of you.  If one person shares something and another person starts to laugh, it can ruin the sharing openly for the year. Conversely, when a student shares something vulnerable, others may feel they, too, can share something about themselves. 

Starting with these four questions, Mrs. Corgan moved on to identity mapping, inviting students to reflect on identity markers that may feel important to them, such as their personality types or unique skills and hobbies. Students then listened to and read examples of famous “This I Believe” essays, identifying and considering what unique personal experiences or aspects of the author’s identity these examples highlighted. Finally, students began writing their own. For Mrs. Corgan, building the foundation of vulnerability paves the way for students to show up to class the rest of the year, “We all have to engage because each person comes to the text with different identities and beliefs.”

For Jim Fiorile, “Mr. Fio,” to his students, engagement includes modeling enthusiasm, centering student voice, and giving students choice. 

Mr. Fio is passionate about history and his enthusiasm comes through in his teaching. He has seen that, “Students respond when they can tell that the teacher loves and is genuinely curious about the material they are teaching.”  Part of what he loves about teaching history is the storytelling, and in Mr. Fio’s class, he is aware that he loves to talk, so he tries to limit the amount of time he spends talking in front of the room. Centering student voice is a key to keeping students engaged in his classes. He designs his lessons to include various ways for students to do the talking, whether in small group share-outs or via online tools like Pear Deck, which allows students who are not as comfortable speaking out loud to share their thoughts and respond anonymously.

With respect to providing students choice, he says, “The more students feel like they have ownership over their learning, the more they buy into the work and feel like the curriculum belongs to them.” Choice in Mr. Fio’s class might be selecting which questions to answer for an essay or homework assignment, or how students want to share their learning at the end of a unit, whether through a podcast, essay, or presentation.

In Shipley’s art department, teachers are focused on increasing students’ engagement with their projects and have incorporated the TAB approach: Teaching for Artistic Behavior. Through this approach, teachers are guided by the essential questions: “How do you teach students to think like an artist?” and “Where can we give more autonomy and more ways for students to express themselves in their artwork?” In a TAB classroom, giving students choice is key, as is building students’ skills and habits of mind as artists so that they have a deeper understanding of the choices they can make in a work of art .

As the students’ skills and Habits of Mind of the Creative Process develop, students will be given more opportunities for choice in project, medium, and expression. For example, in Studio Seminar, the highest level art course offered by the department, students can make and determine choices with less structure from the teacher around “the what” of the project. The structure they are given is around the timeline and logistics of the project as well as the critiques, which students conduct for each other, both informally and formally as their work develops.

Royer and the department are noticing that engagement is increasing and there is more excitement from the students as they have been incorporating more choice. As a result, there are more diverse outcomes with the decisions students make for the projects and more variety in materials students use. “More choice and more variety in project outcomes leads to more excitement and more engagement.” 

Engaging students in learning requires a multi-faceted approach. Upper School math teacher and department chair Lisa Chirlian (Dr. C, as students call her) knows that students engage more deeply when they recognize that they are meeting with success and growing their skills. She uses a variety of methods to help students engage deeply in math learning.  Here are just two examples.  

 

Dr. C’s students are encouraged to take ownership of their learning in various ways. For example, they work on problems in small groups, and one member presents their solution on the board. Afterward, a few other students are asked to offer positive feedback on the clarity and effectiveness of the presentation. This process helps all students focus on clearly demonstrating their thinking through written solutions. Dr. C has noticed that this leads many students to show their work more clearly and with more detail on future assignments. They can then observe their growth as they can successfully solve increasingly complex problems.  

 

Dr. C also leverages technology using online platforms, including DeltaMath and Khan Academy, to create practice assignments.  Because these platforms provide immediate feedback, students can assess their understanding of skills and concepts and independently determine which areas to spend additional time practicing. Students have shared with Dr. C that seeing the “green check” for correct answers encourages them to continue practicing. 

 

Learning math requires both the understanding of foundational skills and the ability to apply them to increasingly challenging problems. Dr. C knows that by helping students observe their learning, whether in class or independently, she empowers them to see themselves as successful problem-solvers capable of advancing their skills to new levels. Since mathematics forms the foundation for many disciplines—science, finance, and engineering, to name just a few—Dr. C works to ensure that her students succeed in her classroom and throughout their educational and professional journeys.