June 3 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
This workshop goes along with the SEL Series: Beyond Compliance – Helping Reluctant Learners Engage. This workshop CAN be attended if you cannot attend the other 2 sessions.
In many classrooms today, educators encounter students who appear reluctant to participate, hesitant to take academic risks, or disengaged from learning. Rather than viewing these behaviors as simple motivation problems, this session explores the deeper factors that shape student engagement, including learning gaps from disrupted schooling, screen fatigue, attention challenges, and a lack of psychological safety in classroom environments.
Using Phillip Schlechty’s levels of engagement, participants will examine how students move between authentic engagement, strategic compliance, ritual compliance, retreatism, and rebellion. Through this lens, educators will explore how classroom experiences, relationships, and expectations influence whether students feel willing and able to participate.
Participants will reflect on common barriers to engagement and consider how factors such as a sense of belonging, perceived competence, meaningful work, and clarity of expectations influence student participation. The session will also introduce key social-emotional skills connected to engagement, including growth mindset, self-confidence, perspective-taking, and agency.
Educators will leave with a clearer framework for recognizing why students disengage and practical strategies for shifting classroom conditions so that reluctant learners feel safer, more capable, and more willing to participate.
Seat paid for by the Area 3 SEL Hub Grant
Registration closes on May 29, 2026
