Winning the war for student engagement

Terence Joseph • Cahn Fellow 2021

High School students are in the final stages of their required mandated education and have very little time to engage in college and career ready educational experiences designed to develop independent learners in four years. Students’ dependence and use of cell phones for non-academic purposes can often eat away at those precious four years one scroll, text and video at a time. To combat this ever present threat to learning and community cohesion, Innovation has engaged in a solution that removes the cell phones and allows teachers to interweave executive functioning and self-regulation Skills into the academic content and culture of our school.  

Our first year of on-campus instruction following eighteen months of virtual education during the Coronavirus pandemic illustrated an urgent need. Virtual learning created a necessary dependence on engagement through technology that our students found difficult to part from. The return to in-person learning was accompanied by low levels of frustration tolerance, disjointed focus during learning activities, an abundance of mental health issues, and atrophied academic skills. As caretakers of our students’ futures, we were responsible for creating a learning environment that compelled students to relearn in-person social interactions and academic engagement.

Through the plan of blocking students’ access to the personal smart devices during school hours and incorporating students’ essential skills development in every touch point we have with students, we have begun to see students engaging in authentic learning and socialization experiences once again. Additionally, teachers and student support staff are gravitating toward leadership opportunities to direct students’ essential skill adoption by sharing their innovative strategies with and receiving feedback from their peers.