"No, we don't have fun here. This is school. It's not supposed to be fun."

If I had 25 cents for every time a kid asked me if we were "doing anything fun today", I'd be able to buy a lot of pumpkin scones for myself. Kids ask this all the time, and especially on Fridays, when we are all thinking about the weekend. And when they ask that question, I give them the same answer: "No. We don't have any fun here. What are you talking about?" I do, however, usually have a smile on my face as I say this. The truth is, we do have fun in my classroom. I like to think (perhaps wrongly) that we have a lot of fun in my classroom. There is certainly a great deal of laughter and enjoyment of learning together. But I will tell you point blank, having fun is not the learning target of any lesson I have ever planned. You will not see "Students are having fun" as one of the success criteria listed for an activity we are doing. Why? Because I don't think being a teacher is about being fun.

I cringe a great deal when I hear people talk about planning activities or choosing games (especially in math class) so that the lesson will be fun. We are educators. We are not entertainers. Our goal is not to entertain our students; it is to educate them. This is why we must learn to differentiate between engaging our students and entertaining  our students. I am currently reading "I'd like to apologize to every teacher I ever had: My year as a rookie teacher at Northeast High" by Tony Danza. In his book,  Danza writes about his experiences teaching high school English in Philadelphia. It's an interesting read, and thought-provoking, even for someone who has been teaching for a long time. One of the most insightful components of his book is the record of the conversations he has with other colleagues in the teacher's lounge. As Danza struggles to prepare for writing an exam for his students, he has a conversation about engagement with a colleague. This colleague wisely advises: "The mistake that many new teachers make is to confuse engagement with passive entertainment." (pg 94) I would say that this is not a mistake that is restricted to new teachers. I think it is something we must battle against every day. We teach in a time where kids are saturated with entertainment. They want to be entertained or they tune out. And consequently there is pressure on teachers to try to meet this demand. We feel that if we aren't fun, if our students aren't having fun, they won't like us, and therefore, they won't learn anything. It's a hard road to go down, and it's even harder trying to drive the other direction.

Now, I am not saying that our goal to should be to just ignore our students and just teach the curriculum. No, I am not saying this at all. What I am saying is that our primary goal needs to be to get to know our students, who they are as people, what they like, what they are interested in, what they are passionate about and to use those things as we seek to provide learning experiences that draw them in--almost to the point where they have forgotten that they are learning, and are truly engaged and are 'in the moment' with us. This is not always easy. I mean, let's be honest here, it can be a challenge to engage students in learning how to divide fractions. But simply finding a game about dividing fractions is not any better than us standing at the front droning on and on about how to divide fractions. Students need to be involved in the learning. It must be active.

I don't have a magic answer for how we do this. But I do know that engagement, rather than entertainment must be our mindset. It can't be the goal we set out with each day. Want to know why? Because we, and our students, will only be disappointed. Everything isn't about 'fun'.  And what we think of as fun, isn't going to be fun for everyone. What pressure to put on ourselves! We have enough to worry about without worrying about making it all fun.

Teaching and learning is a two-way street. The responsibility doesn't lie solely with us, the educators. Students have a responsibility as well. That is what learning is about. I can't learn for someone else. What I can do is to provide learning opportunities and invite my students to join me. Sometimes we have fun. Sometimes we don't. And that is just fine with me.