The daily dance around student engagement and effective lesson planning has been made much too complex in recent years, and I’m not sure why.

We have countless definitions of what engagement is and what it is not, and we still have varied opinions on how we should rate engagement when we observe a classroom lesson.

Let’s be clear that true engagement requires highly advanced instructional methods and is much easier said than done. Still, we should know it when we see it, and the definition itself is not as complex as we are making it out to be.

For me, I prefer to think of student engagement as synonymous with “thinking,” with a nod to things like student interest, choice, and real-world application. In short, we can't define something as "engaging" if the students are not learning.

The real caution here is that we don’t confuse student “interest” or even “excitement” about a lesson with engagement. Why? Because that’s only half the equation (maybe even less than half). Let’s remember that engagement is only important when we are talking about cognitive engagement and that only matters if it leads to honest-to-God learning. This is another way of saying that true engagement requires two things:

Yes, yes. There are many, many great activities that we use to increase engagement and these are excellent ways to increase the likelihood that students are tuned in and learning something. Still, none of these strategies will result in learning if not carried about by a skilled teacher who knows the end-game – increased understanding of skills and standards among all students.

A case in point: We have all seen a science lab where students are moving about the room from station to station and dutifully completing the required steps only to find out that nobody learned anything because the activity or thinking required by the students was not at all challenging.

By the same token, I recall sitting in an excellent science lab a few years ago and suddenly realized that the structures of the lab would make a great framework for labs in other subjects (content labs in language arts, math and social studies classrooms).

Of course, as always, the challenge of engagement and learning comes down to great lesson-planning. And, yes, I want to be clear in saying that great lessons have little to do with the format they are written in or whether or not someone collects them.

Great lessons plans are only great when they have purpose, when they have intentionality, and when they are written with students in mind, not administrators.

Why? Because the greatness of a lesson is not measured by the teacher and certainly not by a principal who is there is observe. A great lesson — just like engagement — is measured best by students and by how it leaves them feeling when the lesson is over.

Here are some student responses we want to hear when a lesson is complete:

As a starting point for teachers who are still exploring this idea of true engagement, I would suggest that all lessons involve some manner of the following:

Anybody who has ever created an effective lesson will tell you that this is very hard work. And, truthfully, nobody really loves the work of planning a great lesson, though we all love that feeling we get when we have taught one.

When planning your next lesson, think about the precision of a great surgeon or engineer or dancer. No extra movements. No more parts than are needed. Intentionality. Efficiency. And always, always focused on the end in mind.