Emotional Engagement Overview
Essential Question
How can teachers improve emotional engagement in their classrooms to shift from student engagement to student empowerment?
Module Goal
To create an understanding of best practices for emotional engagement that allow for student empowerment in the classroom
Module Objectives
Participants will explore five methods for improving students’ emotional empowerment.
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Participants will reflect on their own practices for empowering students in the classroom.
After watching the video of Nick Saban (4:15 mins.), explain your thoughts and reactions to what Nick Saban says about second chances in a journal entry using the following prompt:
Do you agree or disagree? How does what he says relate to punishments/consequences in your school site? Are there times when students should be given second chances? Are there times when students should not be given second chances? How do you think the opportunity of a second chance assists a student's emotional growth and strengthens student/teacher relationships?
What is Emotional Engagement?
Emotional Engagement focuses on the emotional state of students and how various factors, such as a feeling of belonging and individual values, effect a student's involvement with learning.
Emotional engagement in the classroom has been proven to improve retention rates and student success. By providing a welcoming and engaging learning environment, where there are trusting and caring relationships between students and teachers, students are better able to learn and engage in the content being taught. “Students who report having better quality relationships with their teachers, another characteristic of emotionally supportive climates, also report being about three times more engaged than students who report having poor relationships” (Klem & Connell, 2004 as cited in Reyes, et al., 2012, p. 701). Fostering emotional empowerment focuses on building students' intrapersonal and interactional skills.