The Best Way To Keep Students (People) Engaged and Interested
The best thing a student can do is ask questions. It indicates to the teacher that they are engaged and interested in what’s happening. The best thing a teacher can do is encourage students to ask questions.
I am writing this from a teacher’s perspective. But I do believe that these ideas can be applied in a parent-child orboss-employee relationships as well.
Asking questions is a good indicator that the student trusts you. Trusts you not to snap at them; trusts that you will not call them stupid; trusts that you will not allow others to ridicule them.
When I was in 5th grade, our class learned how to ask questions. It was easy. Our geography teacher would always give us little tests at the end of each lesson. Who likes tests? No-one. We definitely didn’t. Luckily, there was a way to escape those. If we asked enough questions during the lesson — the time would run out, the bell would ring, and there would be no test that day.
The fun part was to come up with questions that would be interesting for the teacher to answer, so that he loses track of time. Also, if only one person asked all the questions, that would be incredibly suspicious and transparent. So we needed to work together and have a random distribution of people with questions.
I don’t know if the teacher did this on purpose to teach us how to ask questions. But the results were amazing. We were not afraid to ask questions and became more curious. (Okay, I don’t know about “we”, but I can definitely say this about myself).
I never realized how rare this quality in teachers is until I started teaching myself. I have been tutoring math for over 10 years. It is very difficult to get students to ask any questions. People are often trained at school to never ask about anything.
Some teachers yell at kids for asking something, some professors forbid questions during lectures… I understand that a lot of this comes from the incredible pressure on teachers to explain X amount of things in Y amount of time. And that is stressful for the teacher.
Unfortunately, the long-term side effects of that have a very negative impact on students.
Are students paying attention?
I remember one lecture during my Master’s studies. It was an intro to Quantum Physics class. Our professor wrote some formulas on the blackboard and explained how they came to be. There was one part that seemed confusing to me. I could not understand where it came from, so I asked about it.
At first, the professor didn’t hear me, so he asked me to repeat the question. And then came the moment that absolutely shocked me. Other students in the auditorium were openly annoyed with me for asking something.
One of the students even said:
“This is so obvious. Why are you asking anything?”.
I was so lucky that my 5th-grade Geography teacher taught me to never be afraid of asking questions.
So I responded:
“If this is obvious to you, could you explain it to me?”.That student said:
“No, I can’t. You don’t need to understand. Just copy the formulas quietly”.
I ignored that and repeated my question to the professor.
He paused for a second, looked at the blackboard, and said:
“Oh, sorry. That’s a typo”.
He fixed the typo and continued with the class.
This story always makes me wonder how often people are present physically while mentally they are checked out. And whether a contributing factor to this is that they were not allowed to ask questions when they were in school.
I also often think about my 5th-grade Geography teacher. And how him allowing us to drag the time before the dreaded tests actually ingrained a useful skill into my brain.
I understand that there is not always the luxury of time to allow students to ask away. But there should be some time allocated for questions.
Disrupting the flow
Most of the time teachers are upset that questions interrupt the flow of the lesson, but there is an incredible value in interrupting the rhythm. So many students are mentally checked out during a monotonous lecture. They don’t realize that they are not listening to (and understanding) what the teacher is saying.
The pace of the class can give off a vibe of a routine. What are the chances that a kid will pay attention to what happens during a routine? Do you pay much attention to the movement of your hand when you brush your teeth? Or wash the dishes?
When the flow gets interrupted — this is the time a lot of people are shaken awake and have a chance to start paying attention.
Embracing questions does have a short-term downside — lessons will get slower, and there will be less progress going through the material. I have noticed though, that this is only a short-term problem. And I do believe that the long-term rewards are worth it.
Once students get more engaged and feel safe asking questions, they will get more involved, go through the material quicker, and retain much more information.
The best thing you can do to keep your students interested is to encourage them to ask more questions.
Be grateful when students ask questions. That means they are actually listening to you and want to learn.
Thank you for your time!
P.S. On a less serious note, check out some Dall-e2 bloopers from this article’s images:
Doesn’t look like any teacher I’ve ever seen.
I was outpainting the square image (the left side) with a prompt: students, raising their hands. Turned out the smudge on the blackboard also had a question.
So I decided to erase the ghost raising its hand and I got a cat-mouse in robes.
