One of the things I find myself saying often about teaching and motivating students is that the biggest single factor I’ve found is the extent to which the kids see a possible path to success. No matter how easy it might be to be successful at something, the kids who can see themselves doing it will try, and the kids who can’t see themselves doing it won’t.
I hear a lot of my colleagues say things like “Kids need to learn that if you don’t do the work, you’ll fail.” In my experience, they’ve already learned that lesson, and they’ve decided that it’s their lot in life to live it. In fact, what the kids actually need to learn is that they can do the work and that they can succeed.
The growth that we want for them often requires taking them outside their “comfort zone”. Often they don’t have the maturity or life experience to be able to see whether the uncomfortable activity will be helpful or just painful. Shying away from putting in the effort because it might be painful is a gut-level reaction, and no amount of badgering or browbeating by the teacher is going to overcome it. What the kids really need is to be guided through the process in a way that makes them feel safe and reassures them that if they get stuck, help is right there, and that they will ultimately be successful.
I know how to do this one-on-one. It’s easy: “What time are you coming up to my classroom so you can write that 2-page (single spaced) formal lab report on my computer with me helping you every step of the way? During lunch? Sounds great–I have lunch then too. During my planning period? Of course.” Yes this costs me some of my much-needed downtime, but the kids I can reach then and only then aren’t spoiled brats who can’t be bothered to give up their hanging out with their friends time; they’re the working class kids whose schedule involves juggling jobs and taking care of their siblings (and sometimes their parents or their own children). These are the kids who most need someone to reach them and who will benefit most from learning and practicing what it takes to be successful. Even if I have to eat my lunch while helping a student or give up my planning period three or four days a week, the noticeable effect it has on my students more than makes up for it.
The only problem is that it’s draining, both emotionally and physically, especially in the last week of the quarter when the added motivation of not wanting to fail (or get a D in) chemistry is enough to take the kids just far enough outside their comfort zone that they’re finally able to be guided along the path to success. This ensures that the kids I’m spending so much of my “free” time working with are at a point where they’re afraid to put in the effort, afraid of what will happen if they don’t put in the effort, and afraid that they won’t succeed even if they do put in the effort.
The quarter that just ended yesterday was the one in which my Chem I students had to do a formal lab report, by which I mean scientific journal format including an abstract. We spent more than a week of class time before Christmas break on the report, including roughly one entire class on each of the sections. The kids who kept up with the work as I covered and assigned it had no trouble getting the report done when it was due (on the last day before Christmas break). The ones who were daunted by it and afraid of it didn’t do the work and procrastinated until last week, when they finally had to come to grips with the fact that they were going to fail chemistry for the quarter if they didn’t do it.
Out of my sixty Chem I students, probably ten or twelve hadn’t done the report by last week, and were likely to fail for the quarter. Through the level of one-on-one motivational help I described above, I was able to get that number down to two, which is a respectably low failure rate for any mid-level science class.
This seems to be a pattern–last year in Belmont, I had the same kind of frantic, frenzied week at the end of every quarter, followed by the same mental and physical exhaustion the following week. It’s rough sustaining this level of output, but at the same time, it’s too important not to.
