By Liz Locatelli, Ed. D.
I have left most recent conversations with educators and students feeling very sad. Leaders are overwhelmed, teachers are exhausted and frustrated and students are bored. I couldn’t get my head around how we could make a difference until I had the opportunity to read a draft of Kallick and Martin-Kniep’s article, “A Three-Way Relationship in Service of Deeper Learning.” While it’s not the answer to all the ills we are facing in education today, it did remind me of the basics which we seem to be forgetting in our struggle to teach virtually.
The article reminds us of the simple facts that most educators have learned through experience. Deep learning occurs when students are given opportunities to interact with each other in exploring significant content and relevant issues, when they are held to high standards and when they are given actionable feedback that allows them to improve their performance. A number of students with whom I’ve spoken give their teachers lots of credit for all their effort, but say they feel cheated out of opportunities to interact with their peers. They complain that they are reading and answering questions, but not learning anything of real substance. They are handing in short answers but not getting feedback beyond an indication of which answers need to be corrected or pleasant comments on how nicely they’ve done.
Out of a concern for teachers and students who are working hard but feeling unrewarded, I decided to use the basis of the article to create a tool that would help teachers to think about ways to engage students more fully, even in virtual classes. Using three labels to show what students need, A Community of Trust, Self-Agency and Meaningful Work, I provided specific examples of what a teacher can do to achieve each goal. Having worked with Giselle Martin-Kniep to create guidelines for helping teachers to incorporate Culturally Responsive Pedagogy into their lessons, I decided to use a similar format to create questions that teachers can ask themselves and their students related to the three interrelated keys or goals.
I was excited to find that the tool was extremely helpful in my own preparation for a new Webinar on Empowering Students to Make Sense of Complex Text. With some minor adjustments, I was able to tailor the tool to fit this more specific context and to guide my thinking about the Webinar. The interrelatedness of the three keys became very clear as I rethought how to present strategies that I’ve been sharing for years and the result was a truly enhanced program.
This is a time of great uncertainty for all of us and more than ever we need to reach out to each other, teacher to teacher, teacher to student, student to student, and the list goes on. It may take some creative thinking and planning, but we need to find ways to allow students to interact and to work together, whether in partners on the phone, in small break out rooms through Flipgrid or on Google documents that allow them to comment on each other’s work. They need to share their feelings and experiences as well as their thinking about significant topics and their own learning. They need to be challenged and to be guided toward higher levels of achievement. With more time on their hands, students can greatly benefit from absorbing projects that allow them to focus on issues and ideas beyond their own losses and concerns. Now more than ever our students need us.
Three Interrelated Keys to Greater Student Engagement and Deeper Learning
This tool is designed to help teachers explore strategies and questions that build deeper relationships with students while promoting deeper learning.
Trusting Environment |
Self-Agency |
Meaningful Work |
| The teacher actively engages students in collaborative and community-building activities that help all students feel connected & respected. | The teacher promotes students’ agency and self-advocacy through meaningful choices, scaffolding, feedback and goal setting processes. | The teacher engages students in real-world activities that stimulate curiosity about significant questions, perspectives and texts to build dispositions/skills that prepare students for life beyond school. |
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Create surveys that allow students to give feedback to teachers about:
Provide opportunities for students to share who they area as learners by:
Provide opportunities for students to support each other by:
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Developing student voice & self-agency in exploring options & determining preferences by:
Empower students to assume responsibility for their own learning by:
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Establish clear & specific purposes for learning by:
Make purpose/expectations clear to students by:
Engage students in critically examining and exploring significant local, national & global issues by:
Provide authentic audiences for students by:
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Trusting Environment |
Self-Agency |
Meaningful Work |
Sample questions for teachers:
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Sample questions for teachers:
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Sample questions for teachers:
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Sample Questions for students:
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Sample Questions for students:
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Sample Questions for students:
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Three Interrelated Keys to Empowering Students to Comprehend Complex Text
This tool is designed to help teachers explore strategies and questions that build empower students to read more independently and to understand the message more deeply.
Trusting Environment |
Assessment Interactions |
Content Integrity |
| The teacher actively engages students in collaborative and community-building activities that create an environment of trust where students support each other’s learning. | The teacher promotes students’ agency and self-efficacy through clear expectations, meaningful choices, scaffolding, helpful feedback, reflections on learning and goal setting processes. | The teacher engages students in real-world activities that stimulate curiosity about significant questions & ideas, explore a variety of perspectives and build dispositions/skills that prepare students for life beyond school. |
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Provide opportunities for students participate in non-threatening discussions/activities that allow them to
Provide opportunities for students to share experiences that:
Ask questions that encourage students to explore a text from a variety of perspectives: Provide opportunities for students to support each other by:
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Developing student voice & self-agency in exploring options & determining preferences by:
Empower students to make sense of text independently by:
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Create a reason for engaging with a particular text by:
Make purpose/expectations clear to students by:
Provide authentic audiences for students by:
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Trusting Environment |
Self-Agency |
Meaningful Work |
Sample questions for teachers:
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Sample questions for teachers:
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Sample questions for teachers:
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Sample Questions for students:
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Sample Questions for students:
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Sample Questions for students:
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Liz Locatelli is a consultant at Learner-Centered Initiatives who works with teachers to create Quality Curriculum, including authentic assessment tasks, formative assessments and rubrics, all aligned to the standards. Liz has extensive background in literacy education, curriculum development, professional development and action research. She holds an Ed.D., from New York University in Literacy Education and her dissertation was on engaging teachers in creating their own curriculum.
