Why We’re Rethinking Student Engagement for the New School Year

Though student engagement has always been essential to teaching and learning, the pandemic has impacted students in ways that raise questions about what it takes to engage students this term. In this episode, we invited a panel of educators to share their updated thinking on student engagement in a post-pandemic classroom.

Resources: Flipped Learning Global Initiative (FLGI)

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Jay McTighe has co-authored 14 books, including the award-winning and best-selling “Understanding by Design” series with Grant Wiggins. He recently co-authored Teaching for Deeper Learning: Tools to Engage Students in Meaning Making with Harvey Silver. He is the director of the Maryland Assessment Consortium, a state collaboration of school districts working together to develop and share formative performance assessments.

Angela Maiers has been listed as one of IBM’s Top 20 Global Influencers, named by Forbes as one of the Top 5 Education Leaders to Watch, in 2017 and 2018, and is among Huffington Post’s Top 100 Social Media Influencers! Angela founded the global movement, Choose2Matter in 2014, with a singular mission to help individuals recognize their value and potential contribution to change both their own lives and the world. Her work has been shared in 78,000 classrooms across 100 countries that has rallied more than a million children.

Brian Smith has taught at Triton Central Elementary for over 20 years in both 1st and 4th-grade classrooms. In addition to that, Brian is the co-director of the 4th-12th grade NASP archery program at Triton Central. At home, Brian is the father of 7th-grade twins and loves to spend time in his woodworking shop.

Dr. Steven Weber serves as the Associate Superintendent for Teaching and Learning in Fayetteville Public Schools (Arkansas). During his career in public education, he has served as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, director of secondary instruction, and executive director of curriculum and instruction. He has also served as a social studies curriculum coordinator with the Arkansas Department of Education and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.

Karen Randazzo is an enthusiastic chemistry teacher in New Jersey. She believes that every student has the power to learn anything, even chemistry. Chemistry teacher by day, teacher-author by night, she’s dedicated to making teachers’ lives more manageable by offering professional development, sharing her engaging resources on her website, and collaborating with educators on various social media platforms. A former ‘chalk and talk’ teacher, she shares her journey navigating the Next Generation Science Standards and student-centered learning on her YouTube channel.