You can find hundreds of articles and resources discussing how important it is for the teacher to be the energy in the classroom. Why is it so important?
Two primary effects:
1. Instructional time is maximized.
2. The students are engaged.
You ever notice how fast an observation goes when you're in an energetic classroom? Forty-five minutes fees like 15. The best compliment a student can give a teacher is, at the end of the class, you hear, "It's time to go already?!?". This only occurs when the instructional time is maximized, keeping students engaged for the entire class period.
Last week, I retweeted a tweet by @Jaymelinton (who will be moderating Wednesday's #ncadmin chat, "New Teacher Support", at 8 pm [shameless plug]), which was originally posted by @coolcatteacher:
"Students will rarely exceed the energy you put into the equation."
The importance of energy and enthusiasm was best demonstrated near the end of Thursday's observation:
Since this occurred in a world language class, I'm not sure what exactly the teacher said (it was not a Spanish class-I can normally hold my own in a Spanish class). All of the sudden, 24 high school students had their feet off of the ground and were sitting on top of their desks, working furiously on the activity and participating with the dialogue led by the teacher. It was some sort of quick-paced, relatively silly, "the floor has turned into hot lava that is rising towards the desk" activity. These students could not care less about "looking cool" in front of others. Remember, these are high school students.
Every single student participated; Every single student was engaged; This was the result of the energy in the room.
Thanks for reading!
CS
The opinions shared in this blog belong to Craig Smith and do not represent the school or district in which he works.
The following comment was emailed to me by the VP of a business in the private sector:
ReplyDeleteExcellent article. It's amazing how often your blogs and subjects correlate to the business world. With this article I thought of energy in the business meeting. If the group in the meeting in energized and engaged the results of the meeting are increased significantly. Making the meetings more interesting with "fun" activities like the one you mentioned in this blog is always a good idea and a way to keep the group energized. Thanks again for another great reminder for us private sector business people!
Don