Daniel Pink explains how people are driven by autonomy, purpose, and mastery. John Hattie speaks of the need for teachers to each "Know Thy Impact" and consider how students are experiencing the learning environment. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's work in "Flow" -- the psychology of optimal experience -- applies even more today. All learning begins with student engagement with the topic, content, and/or experience.

The Power of Teacher-Made Videos for Engagement

We want our students to become independent learners, but teachers need to remain very connected to them. We recommend Five Types of Videos to build student engagement (samples are in this blog post):

• Morning Message — a 1- to 2-minute video welcoming students to the day; for kindergarten students, we recommend a recorded morning meeting, complete with calendar, weather, and singing! Examples: kindergarten morning message and secondary English Language Arts

• The Benchmark Lesson — a 2- to 3-minute inspirational video to inspire students to want to learn curricular content. Examples: Butterfly Life Cycle and Math Concept of Pi

• The Directions Video — a brief screencast to provide directions, especially when students are working from home and can't always access ready help. Example: How to Use a Graphic Organizer on Multiple Perspectives and how to use a specific website to find missing letters in words

• The Instructional Video — a 5- to 15-minute video of recorded direct instruction, in lieu of live instruction, that is interactive and targeted to the current group of students. Example: math video

• The Insights Video — a 5- to 10-minute video of the teacher's (or a student's) insights from the content, applying the learning to future content or anything else that typically emerges while facilitating or learning. Example: elementary school and middle school