Learning and motivation

This week's reading is the best we have done. I think these readings strike at the heart of one of the worst problems in education: why won't a student ask for help? And why is it that the students who need help the most are the least likely to ask for it? Every experienced teacher knows this is true, and most have guessed the reason why. This research confirms what most teachers instinctively feel. We feel this way because we, ourselves, have been there. How often for this very class do we e-mail Brian and Jordan privately for fear that we will appear stupid to the rest of the class? I do and I will admit that I do. And some of my questions are, indeed, idiotic. (Brian and Jordan could confirm this but they are too polite to do so:>)

But here is where we differ from our students: we have graduated from college at least once and have been admitted to grad school so we know we have at least some level of intellectual ability. Imagine being a young student who comes to your class with perhaps some bad grades and bad experiences from prior years in school, something that, I would guess, few, if any of us, have gone through. They have no confidence in their ability to learn anything well. And we wonder why they won't ask questions? Perhaps the student is an English language learner or has been in a resource class or they've been told they are not too bright. Naturally, they fear appearing stupid to not only the class, but to the teacher as well.

I had a big football player in my class a couple of years ago who rarely came to class. But every time he came he would tell me that he was going start coming every day - and never did. He failed one term and was on his way to failing another when I cornered him and told him how badly we needed him on the team. And if he failed, he wouldn't be on the team. Our conversation went as follows: (abbreviated)
Me: Where are you during class? Where do you go?
T: Home.
Me: What do you do there?
T: Sleep
Me: Why? Do you need that much sleep? Are you not getting sleep at night?
T: I get a lot of sleep at night. I guess I'm just lazy.
Me: No you aren't. Lazy has got nothing to do with it. Look at how you workout with the team. Look at how you have shaped your own body into prime condition. You aren't lazy. You've worked your head off.

He stared at me with his mouth open, shocked I would notice.
Me: Your problem is that you've had bad experiences in the past with school. You're afraid you're going to fail so you don't try. If you don't try, then it's not really a failure, is it? You never ask for help, you never do the assignments, and some of the time you don't even bother to show up. Why? Because if you avoid trying, then you don't have to take the fall for failing.
T: How do you know all this? (said in a hushed tone like I had uncovered the greatest secret in the world.)
Me: Do you have any idea how many students I've taught?

He followed me down the hall, all the way into the cafeteria asking me how I knew this and staring at me like I was from Mars. I got very lucky with this one. He did a total turnaround and got B's the rest of the year. He didn't dare miss class again.

The one and only reason this worked is that I knew this kid, I knew what was important to him, and I showed that I cared about him as an individual. But while I was caring for this one kid, five, maybe ten others slipped away from me because I can't get to that level with some 230 students. I try to create a positive, supportive environment for these kids as a group. But that isn't enough for some students. They need the personal touch to turn from performance and social goals to mastery goals.

What else can a teacher do? First, be competent in what they teach; they should know a lot about their subject, breadth and depth. That way they become examples of competence. Second, teachers should continually connect the learning to current every day life so students know why they need to know this or that. Point out the pitfalls of not knowing. I like to put "Hollyweird" celebrities up as cases of not knowing. How tough is it to pick on Brittney Spears or the like? Third, teachers can carefully point out every student's ability in some area if they can get to know their students.

If teachers feel like they have to be nearly everything to every student - well, welcome to teaching.

Human development and learning

I had a friend years ago who used to tell me, "No matter where you go, there you are." At the time I thought this was the dumbest statement I'd ever heard. He would say that and I would think, "Duh." Now I realize that I wasn't understanding what he was trying to say.

Many of us want to put the stages of human development into nice, neat age ranges and never think about those that may not fit into those ranges. We don't want to think that a high school student may be in the concrete stage or even in a pre-operational stage. The opposite is also true: we don't want to think that one of our students could be seven years old and fully in the formal operations with full abstract thought processes.

Yet for learning to happen, the student must be initially addressed in the stage where they are at; the idea that no matter where you go, there you are. As was mentioned in the reading, we don't teach calculus to pre-operational students because they don't have the capacity to understand.

Teachers should begin in the stage where the students are at; then they have the responsibility to help them move to the next stage of thinking. The difficulty comes in knowing the students well enough to do this. I know that I am frustrated with the inability to get to know my students until well into the year because of the numbers I have in my classroom. With 40 plus students per class, I am lucky to get all their names down by the end of 1st term.

Technology can help. The Jordan School District recently went to the Skyward system. We have the ability to look at the student's test scores on our own computer. Now I realize this isn't going to tell me what operational stage my student is in, but if I see consistent low test scores, I can watch for specific problems with that student. I need to assume that many of my students are in the concrete operations stage and help them to move to the formal operations stage.

I agree with Brian that something is lost in translation with the theories of Piaget. I truly understand his theories only when I read the examples he gives. Then I see the accuracy and the genius of his human development ideas.