Blog Bits

Do Students Just Want to Have Fun?

In a perception survey conducted by Victoria Bernhardt, ten thousand students were asked, “What has to be in place for you to learn best in the classroom?” Overwhelmingly, the top three answers included, (1) the teachers show that they care for me as a person, (2) the teachers make sure I learn, and (3) the teachers assign work that is fun.

So, what does fun mean? Does it mean that teachers have to be a stand-up comedian to reach children? Do teachers have to dress up in costume to teach a Civil War unit? Or maybe fun means that the only successful teachers are ones that play fun games in class.

Fortunately, Bernhardt was forward-thinking enough and also surveyed students’ on their perception of what fun meant. According to Bernhardt’s survey, fun had two distinct definitions. First, fun is a class where the teacher provides rigorous work for his/her students to be engaged in every day. Secondly, fun is a class where each student can point to, touch, or hold a product as the direct result of the rigorous work that was assigned by the teacher.

So, if that’s all it takes, let our children have fun.

Victoria Bernhardt speaks nationally for the Hope Foundation. Her work is part of the research that supports the six principles of effective schools in Alan Blankstein’s book, Failure is Not an Option. To read more from the Hope Foundation visit www.hopefoundation.org.