Student Engagement

The characteristics of engaging work as described by Dr. Phillip Schlechty in his book, Engaging Students, include:

• personal response (more than one right answer),
• clear/modeled expectations (students know what success “looks like”),
• emotional/intellectual safety (freedom to take risks),
• learning with others,
• sense of audience,
• choice (meaningful options),
• novelty and variety, and
• authenticity (connecting to experience or prior learning.).

I do my best to include as many of those characteristics in my lessons as I can.

I strive to make my art lessons and assignments as highly engaging as possible for my students. Visit my teaching pages at burlingtonhighschoolart.weebly.com (Once there, scroll down and to the left for my courses) for examples from my classes that contain most or all of the characteristics of engaging work as described above.

I promote the appreciation of the benefits of personal investment and dedicated work habits. As student complete their work on one project, they are introduced to the next lesson/project, so there is no pause in learning.​