I started teaching high school history in 2007, back when “engagement” still meant hoping the overhead projector bulb didn’t burn out mid-lecture. Over 1,700 students later and in the midst of the current student apathy crisis, I’ve learned that student engagement best practices aren’t something you master and file away. They’re something you live, adjust, and occasionally completely overhaul based on the humans sitting in front of you.
Since 2018, I’ve been training K-12 teachers on student-centered learning, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: the learning process only truly begins when students stop performing engagement and start actually feeling it. Let me show you what I mean.
The Day I Realized I Was Doing It Wrong
It was a Tuesday in March 2012. I was teaching a lesson on World War II homefront propaganda, and I’d nailed it. Primary sources? Check. Thoughtful discussion questions? You bet. A hook that would grab even the most disinterested junior? I’d spent Sunday afternoon on it.
And yet, three rows back, a student had his head down. Not asleep, I’d learned to tell the difference by then, just… done. Done with me, done with the material, done with pretending that any of this mattered to his life.
I walked over during a transition and crouched down. “Hey. What’s going on?”
He lifted his head just enough to meet my eyes. “Mrs. B, when am I ever going to use this? Like, actually use it?“
It wasn’t defiance. It was a genuine question. And I didn’t have a great answer.
That moment sent me down a rabbit hole that eventually became my entire approach to teaching and, later, to training other teachers. This student didn’t need more information. He needed a reason to care. He needed engagement that connected to his actual life.
What Student Engagement Actually Looks Like (Hint: It’s Not What You Think)
When I first started teaching, I confused activity with engagement. If students were quiet and taking notes, I figured they were engaged. If they participated in class discussions, even better. Good grades? Clearly, they learned something. But here’s what I’ve learned about student learning over nearly two decades: there are actually different types of engagement, and they don’t all look the same.
Behavioral engagement is what most teachers chase first. Students follow rules, participate when called on, and complete assignments. It’s visible and measurable, and it makes administrators happy during observations. But high behavioral engagement doesn’t always mean students are learning at a deeper level, which is the goal.
Emotional engagement is trickier. This is about students’ feelings toward school, teachers, and the subject matter. When students have an emotional connection to what they’re learning, they stick with challenging tasks longer and remember material after the test. I saw this most clearly in my CTE students…kids who struggled in traditional classrooms but came alive when they saw how welding or automotive repair connected to real careers.
Cognitive engagement is the gold standard. This is when students invest mental effort in understanding complex ideas, thinking critically, and persisting through challenges. They’re not just doing the work…they’re thinking about their thinking. They’re asking “why,” “what if,” and “how do we know.”
The best student engagement strategies target all three. But here’s what took me years to understand: you can’t force cognitive or emotional engagement in the learning environment. You can only create conditions where they emerge naturally, engaging students at a higher level.
Small Groups, Big Results
Let me tell you about a shift that changed everything for me. Around 2014, I started experimenting with small groups in ways that went beyond “turn to your partner and discuss.”
I’d always used group work, but honestly? Early in my career, it was often low-order activities dressed up in collaborative clothing. Students would split up textbook sections, share notes, and call it done. They weren’t really learning together…they were dividing and conquering. Remember: our students are human beings, just like we are… if there’s an easy way to get through something, they’re going to do it!
Real collaborative learning looks different. When I started designing tasks that required students to genuinely depend on each other, everything shifted. For example, in my U.S. History course, I’d give groups of students a set of primary sources that contradicted each other. Their job wasn’t to find the correct answer…there wasn’t one. Their job was to build an argument that accounted for the contradictions and then defend it to another group.
The difference was immediate. Students who’d been silent during whole-class discussions found their voices in small groups. Students who struggled with reading comprehension discovered they were brilliant at spotting logical flaws in arguments. And here’s the thing about group discussions in this format: they forced students to practice communication skills they’d actually need in the real world.
One student told me at the end of the year, “I never talked in class before because I was afraid of being wrong. But in my group, I could try out ideas and get feedback before I had to say them in front of everyone.” Profound for a sophomore, isn’t it? That’s the power of designing for active participation instead of just hoping for it.
The Attention Span Myth and What to Do About It
There’s a lot of talk about students’ attention spans these days, and I’ll be honest: some of it’s true, and some of it’s excuse-making. Yes, social media has changed how students process information. Yes, it’s harder than ever to hold students’ attention for a full period. But I’ve also watched high school students spend three straight hours building something in a CTE shop or debating a controversial topic with zero breaks… because they were interested and invested in what they were doing.
The issue isn’t attention spans. The issue is whether what we’re teaching feels worth attending to.
When I train teachers now, I ask them to think about cognitive load. The human brain can only process so much new information at once. If we spend the first twenty minutes of class lecturing at students, their brains are full before we ever get to the interesting stuff. This is especially true for younger students and for new students who haven’t yet built the stamina for sustained academic work, which we know has been an issue since 2020.
I learned to front-load active learning techniques early in the period. A quick debate. A mystery to solve. A primary source to analyze in pairs. Then, once students were curious, I’d fill in context with short bursts of direct instruction. It’s counterintuitive…shouldn’t you give them background first?…but it works because students have a reason to care about the background.
What I Learned About Middle School vs. High School
When I started training teachers across grade levels, I had to unlearn some assumptions. Student engagement strategies that work for high school students don’t always translate to middle school, and vice versa.
Middle schoolers are wired for social interaction in ways that can either power your classroom or destroy it. They need positive relationships with teachers, but they need positive relationships with peers even more. The best middle school teachers I’ve trained build collaboration into everything. They use group work not as a break from learning but as the vehicle for learning.
High school students, on the other hand, need relevance. They’re constantly asking (sometimes silently) whether this matters for their future. This is where connecting to real-world applications becomes non-negotiable. In my history classes, I started framing everything around questions my students actually had: How do governments convince people to support wars? How do we know if a source is telling the truth? Who gets to decide what stories we tell about the past?
For high school students, especially, experiential learning is powerful. When individual students can see how academic skills connect to careers they actually want or topics that interest them, engagement follows naturally, and therefore, so does a deeper understanding of the content.
The Gallup Study That Changed How I Think About Relationships
Back in 2014, I came across a Gallup study that stuck with me. They surveyed students about whether they had a teacher who made them feel excited about the future, whether their teachers made them feel their schoolwork was important, and whether they had at least one teacher who believed they would be successful.
The results were predictable but still devastating: the longer students were in school, the less likely they were to answer yes to these questions. By high school, fewer than half of students agreed that they had a teacher who made them feel their schoolwork was important.
But here’s what really got me: the study also found that these factors…having strong relationships with teachers, feeling that schoolwork matters…were strongly correlated with academic success and student success later in life. Not just grades. Not just test scores. Life outcomes.
This is why I now encourage my teachers spend as much time thinking about a positive classroom environment as they do about lesson plans. When students have a good relationship with their teacher, they’re willing to struggle through difficult material. They ask for help when they’re confused. They take intellectual risks.
Building that kind of relationship isn’t complicated, but it is intentional. It means trying to have small talk with each student every day. It means remembering that Marcus’s mom just lost her job or that Jasmine’s soccer team made the playoffs. It means asking open-ended questions about students’ lives and actually listening to the answers.
I’m not saying this to sound noble. I’m saying it because it works. Students learn more from teachers they trust. Full stop.
Digital Tools, Real Engagement
Let’s talk about educational technology tools for a minute, because I’ve seen this go both ways. Early in my career, I was skeptical of any technology that didn’t involve paper and primary sources. Then I watched students zone out during what I thought was a perfectly engaging discussion, only to come alive when we used a simple polling tool that let them answer anonymously.
The best digital tools don’t replace engagement…they enable it. Discussion forums let quiet students process before they speak. Collaborative documents let students build on each other’s ideas in real time. Simple polling tools show students that their voice matters and give you instant data on who’s confused.
But I’ve also seen technology become a crutch. Students staring at screens while teachers stare at screens isn’t engagement…it’s parallel avoidance. The question I ask myself now is: does this tool increase active participation, or does it just make my life easier? If it’s the latter, I reconsider.
If you’re using technology in place of paper 1:1, then you’re simply not using it effectively.
The Truth About “Best Practices”
Here’s something I wish someone had told me in 2007: student engagement best practices aren’t a checklist. They’re not something you implement, and then you’re done. They’re more like a compass…they point you in the right direction, but you still have to navigate the terrain yourself.
I’ve watched teachers try to copy exactly what they saw in a PD session, only to have it flop because their students weren’t ready for that level of independence or because the timing was wrong or because a dozen other variables didn’t align. Successful implementation isn’t about following a script. It’s about understanding the principles underneath the practices and then adapting them to your context.
Take project-based learning, for example. When it works, it’s transformative. Students develop ownership of their learning, practice critical thinking, and produce work that matters beyond the classroom. But I’ve also seen project-based learning go sideways when teachers haven’t built the scaffolding students need to be successful. The result is frustration for everyone, and the teacher generally won’t try it again.
The same is true for pretty much every strategy I’ve mentioned. Small groups can be incredible for collaborative learning, or they can be a place where one student does all the work while others check their phones. Class discussions can build critical thinking, or they can be dominated by a few voices while everyone else mentally checks out.
The difference is in the design. Clear learning objectives. Explicit success criteria. Thoughtful grouping of students. Wait time after questions. Structures that ensure all voices are heard, not just the loudest ones.
What Actually Moves the Needle
After my years in the classroom and then additional years of training teachers, I’ve landed on a handful of principles that consistently matter more than anything else:
Students need ownership. When students have choices about topics, about products, about processes, engagement follows. This doesn’t mean throwing out your curriculum. It means building choice into the structure. Let students choose which primary source to analyze. Let them choose how to demonstrate their learning. Let them choose the lens through which they’ll explore the required content.
Relationships are the foundation. I’ve never seen deep engagement in a classroom where students don’t trust the teacher. Building that trust takes time and intentionality, but it’s not complicated. Show up. Be consistent. Demonstrate that you see students as people, not just as learners. Apologize when you’re wrong. Hold high expectations while offering high support.
Remember, we’re dealing with humans whose frontal lobes will not be fully formed for many years. That’s vital to remember.
Cognitive engagement requires cognitive challenge. If the work is too easy, students check out. If it’s too hard, they give up. The sweet spot is work that stretches students just beyond what they can do independently…with supports in place to help them reach. This is where scaffolding comes in. Break complex tasks into manageable chunks. Provide models of successful student work. Build in opportunities for peer review and revision.
Different students need different things. I’ve taught students who thrived on independent research and students who needed constant interaction. Students who processed everything through writing, and students who needed to build things to understand them. The best teachers I know don’t try to be everything to everyone, but they do build enough variety into their teaching that every student gets something that works for them.
The Long Game
When I think about the 1,700 students I’ve taught, I don’t remember most of their test scores. I remember the ones who came back to visit years later and told me what actually stuck.
The kid who asked why he needed to learn about WWII propaganda? He’s a high school history teacher now. He tells his students the same story I told him, and he designs his classes around the questions they actually have.
The one who was afraid to speak in class? She’s a lawyer. She argues cases in front of judges every day.
Another student, Carlos, struggled in my class but came alive in the CTE automotive program. He owns a repair shop now and hires students from that same program. He tells me he uses the thinking skills from my class every day when he’s diagnosing problems that don’t have obvious solutions.
Student engagement best practices aren’t about getting through the material. They’re about helping students see themselves as capable of learning, thinking, and contributing. They’re about creating conditions where students develop not just knowledge but also the confidence to use it.
This work is hard. It takes time. You’ll try things that fail, and you’ll have to adjust. But when it works…when a student who’s been silent all semester finally raises a hand, when a group that couldn’t work together figures out how to collaborate, when a kid who thought school wasn’t for them starts staying after class to ask questions…there’s nothing else like it.
The investment you make now will pay dividends for years to come. Not just in test scores or graduation rates, but in students who leave your classroom believing they can learn, grow, and make a difference in the world. And honestly? That’s why most of us got into this in the first place.
This post was originally published on September 14, 2021.