Motivating students to engage

Robert groaned as he stretched across two chairs in my classroom, arms crossed, pencil untouched. Around him, the hum of students writing filled the room, but he would not participate. We were learning about animal defense –  a topic I hoped would spark curiosity – but no amount of prompting seemed to work that day.

As I knelt beside him, I realized this moment was about more than one assignment. It reflected a deeper challenge many students face: feeling overwhelmed, unmotivated, and disconnected from learning.

Robert’s story is one example of a broader challenge facing classrooms across Arkansas. While many factors contribute to these outcomes, disengagement plays a significant role. Students like Robert, who view learning as overwhelming, are less likely to persist or build confidence—widening achievement gaps over time. When students repeatedly experience frustration without support, school can begin to feel like a place of failure rather than growth.

Recent Grade 3 reading assessment data from the Arkansas Department of Education, reported by the University of Arkansas, reinforce this pattern, showing how early disengagement begins. While the percentage of students scoring at the Advanced level increased slightly, overall reading proficiency declined from 36.2% in 2024 to 35.7% in 2025. More concerning is the rise in students performing at Level 1—the lowest performance category—which increased from 27.4% to 29.6%. These trends suggest that while some students continue to succeed, a growing number are struggling at the most foundational levels of reading.

In classrooms across the state, teachers like me see this struggle play out every day. Students arrive with different levels of confidence, background knowledge, and past experiences with school, yet they are often expected to engage with learning in the same way. For students like Robert, repeated difficulty can quickly turn into avoidance, especially in reading and writing tasks that feel high stakes. Without intentional support, these students can fall further behind—not because they lack ability, but because they begin to disengage. Recognizing this pattern has pushed me to think differently about my role as a teacher and the importance of instructional decisions that reduce barriers while maintaining meaningful learning.

Professional development has shaped how I respond to students like Robert, particularly in the areas of motivation, differentiation, and social-emotional support. Rather than relying on broad strategies, I have learned to make intentional instructional choices that meet students where they are while still holding them to high expectations. This is especially important when it comes to building Robert’s literacy skills. When we’re reading our chapter book, “The Hope Chest,” I use shorter passages, visual diagrams, and sentence frames such as: At the end of Chapter 7, Violet is feeling (sad) because she (didn’t find Chloe). This allows Robert to focus on understanding key ideas instead of becoming overwhelmed by reading or writing demands. With these scaffolds in place, Robert successfully completed the Chapter 7 written response by filling in the sentence frame and then shared his answer during our class discussion, demonstrating engagement in tasks he had previously avoided.

Through professional development, I’ve learned how important motivation and student choice are for engagement. Robert is much more willing to work when he has a chance to talk through his thinking before writing. Allowing him to explain his ideas out loud first helps reduce his frustration and builds his confidence, making it easier for him to transition into written responses. This small shift—giving him space to think aloud—changed his willingness to participate and reminded me that motivation often begins with feeling heard by the teacher.

Professional learning around social-emotional support has also shaped how I respond when Robert becomes overwhelmed. During writing tasks, he sometimes shuts down, so I focus on acknowledging his frustration and breaking the work into manageable steps. Responding with empathy rather than immediate correction helps him stay engaged and continue working instead of giving up. Instead of seeing resistance as defiance, I now recognize it as a signal that a student needs support, reassurance, or a different entry point into the task.

These moments have also changed how I think about professional development as a whole. Effective training is not about adding strategies to a checklist, but about responding thoughtfully to the students in front of us. When professional learning is grounded in real classroom challenges, it equips me with tools I can apply immediately—tools that make a difference not just academically, but emotionally as well.

Experiences like these have reinforced that effective teaching requires flexibility and responsiveness. Specific, targeted professional development has helped me make intentional choices that support motivation, differentiation, and my students’ emotional needs. When instruction is adjusted to meet students where they are, learners like Robert are more likely to re-engage, participate, and experience success. For students who have already begun to doubt themselves as learners, those moments of success can shift how they see school and restore a sense of belonging and possibility.

Editor’s note: Emilee Roy is a 4th-grade literacy teacher at Lincoln Middle School in Lincoln, Ark. She is a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Arkansas Policy Fellow. The opinions expressed are those of the author.