Willy Wood is the president of Educational Solutions International in Columbia, Missouri. Willy Wood now blogs on educational subjects at willywoodteaching.com.
Following the 2017 Super Bowl, Wood posted an article titled, “What the Super Bowl Can Teach Us About Teaching.” In it, he used the vast television audience of the Super Bowl game to demonstrate how passion in a subject generates engagement.
Educators have talked about engagement for years, but students are reluctant to engage until they see the relevance of a topic to them. Before a teacher can make a subject relevant to a student, the teacher must make an effort to learn about the student’s interests.
While it can be difficult to keep track of multiple students with constantly changing interests, the teacher can break the class into small groups and have them relate the day’s lesson to some current event.
Nearly all youths enjoy music, so asking them to choose a song that most closely resembles a historical or fictional character will get their minds working. Another fun technique is to employ the time machine perspective, where the teacher directs students to imagine they came from the time being studied to the present and encourages them to judge today’s world from that perspective.
Following the 2017 Super Bowl, Wood posted an article titled, “What the Super Bowl Can Teach Us About Teaching.” In it, he used the vast television audience of the Super Bowl game to demonstrate how passion in a subject generates engagement.
Educators have talked about engagement for years, but students are reluctant to engage until they see the relevance of a topic to them. Before a teacher can make a subject relevant to a student, the teacher must make an effort to learn about the student’s interests.
While it can be difficult to keep track of multiple students with constantly changing interests, the teacher can break the class into small groups and have them relate the day’s lesson to some current event.
Nearly all youths enjoy music, so asking them to choose a song that most closely resembles a historical or fictional character will get their minds working. Another fun technique is to employ the time machine perspective, where the teacher directs students to imagine they came from the time being studied to the present and encourages them to judge today’s world from that perspective.