ABSTRACT
In high-performing urban schools, students are more likely to understand and master challenging academic content, in part because students learn to love learning. Teachers create learning environments that are interesting and exciting. To lead students to love learning, teachers in high-performing schools exhibited sincere enthusiasm for the content they were teaching and for the students they were serving. Teachers deliberately helped their students understand how the content they were learning was relevant to their current and future lives. Often teachers enhanced student perceptions of relevance by making concepts seem real to students. In many high-performing urban schools, students learned to love learning because learning was structured in ways that required students to complete projects, solve problems, and experience real-world phenomena. Students enthusiastically engaged in mathematics, science, social studies, and English lessons when art, music, or drama provided avenues for connecting the academic content with their cultural, social, and personal backgrounds.
