How to keep students engaged and motivated, according to Chicago-area educators
CHICAGO (WLS) -- One hot-button issue during the mayoral campaign in Chicago is how to improve education and better engage students.
But, it's not just in the city. Across the country, average test scores on college entrance exams are the lowest they've been in two decades.
"Our youth is facing unprecedented mental health challenges following the pandemic. Teaching - a rewarding profession - may be more challenging than ever," said U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy.
ABC7 spoke with two award-winning teachers, who are on the frontlines everyday, about how they motivate and engage their students, especially now. Sharon Ponder-Ballard is a performing arts and literature teacher at Englewood STEM High School. And, in 2022, she was a Golden Apple winner.
Corey Duzan teaches at Lockport Township High School. He just received the National Project Lead the Way "Engineering Teacher of the Year" Award. He acknowledged when a lot of people hear "engineering," they think it's kind of a "scary subject, very difficult and very challenging. And overall, it is."
But, Duzan said, "Sort of the secret in all of it is just keeping things relevant with the kids, having them take ownership on something. Put something in front of them that they understand, that they know.'"
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Ponder-Ballard also weighed in.
"I try keeping culturally and socially relevant in my class helping students make real world or relevant connections to texts like 'The Hate You Give,' 'A Raisin In The Sun,' 'The House On Mango Street,' 'Monster,' by Walter Dean Myers," Ponder-Ballard said.
"What we did was absolutely unbelievable in a very short amount of time," Duzan added about the adjustments made at the beginning of the pandemic.
He said there were a lot of things they learned along the way.
"We started setting up a lot of support because of this. We're having time, one-on-one, face-to-face interventions with teachers. We started that a lot more with COVID and that has actually carried over right now," said Duzan. "We know that there are students who need that support and we're giving that to them."
"We know that due to inequitable funding, many of our students did experience a stop, or a pause or a gap in their learning. And, we tried as best as we could to assist our students. For instance, we had teachers who volunteered, we took computers and laptops to students' homes. We had students who didn't have access to Wi-Fi so they were parked outside in front of our school in a car or a relative's van just so they could get online," Ponder-Ballard said.
As for their mental well-being, Ponder-Ballard said, "We embed a lot of the social-emotional learning into every aspect of our curriculum, and it's so important to do so."
