Did you become a teacher because you love learning, love kids, and love to see kids learning and flourishing? Do you have moments, seasons, periods, or classes where you would be delighted to see that happening even more than it is? Dave Stuart Junior’s new book The Will to Learn: Cultivating Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own is a resource that can help.
He says, “Love—the active, earnest, and intelligent pursuit of our neighbors’ good. Is this not what we spend our labors on each day in our classrooms with our students? Schools exist for a single purpose: to promote the long-term flourishing of young people. Specifically, we do this by teaching them to master disciplines that they likely wouldn’t otherwise” (loc 244).
Stuart delivers an inspiring big picture, a wealth of specific examples of what has worked for real teachers, and a research base that supports his own credibility. For example, he explains 5 key beliefs in students’ hearts that will motivate them as learners (credibility, value, effort, efficacy, belonging–see graphic below) and 10 strategies that a teacher can use to strengthen those beliefs. Each of the strategies includes examples from multiple grade levels and fields.
Stuart’s 5 beliefs that motivate students are:
- Credibility: The student believes that you, as her teacher, are good at your job.
- Value: The student believes that the work he does in your class is worth his time.
- Effort & Efficacy: The student believes that with intelligent effort, she can succeed at the work in your class. (These 2 beliefs are grouped together because they are so closely related.)
- Belonging: The student believes that people like him do the work of your class.
Stuart’s 10 strategies that strengthen the 5 beliefs in students’ hearts are as follows:
1. “Track Attempted MGCs” (loc 1491): An MGC–or moment of genuine connection–is an intentional, brief (15-30 seconds) interaction with a student about a personal or academic topic where you “attempt to communicate, earnestly and simply, that you value, know, or respect that student” (loc 1491).
The significance is in the tracking. Most teachers I know would agree that attempting such moments is a good thing—but no one I know (including me) actually tracks it. Which means our efforts are unevenly spread, and we may spend ourselves on a few students while missing opportunities with others.
2. “Improve at One Thing” (loc 1979): Rather than being overwhelmed by all the things we think we need to improve in, the author suggests selecting 1 to focus intently on for 2 or 3 months. This should be one of 8 areas that builds that most foundational quality: credibility. Stuart (A) lists the 8 crucial areas, (B) models how to break the first 2 down into some specific, constituent parts, and (C) provides resources for those parts.
One resource he provides is a chart on what to do with your body, voice, and word choice in order to convey a “warmly authoritative teacher presence.” The chart articulates at a granular level what I realize I naturally do as a teacher with over 30 years of experience, but it would have been gold to me early in my career (loc 2151).
3. “Gentle Urgency” (loc 2328): This section includes a practical list of ways to enact non-stressful respect for limited learning time at the beginning, middle, and end of class. Stuart reminds us that “as teachers, our sense of sacred urgency must be balanced by a palpable kindness, calm, peace, and gentleness” (loc 2328).
4. “Micro-sermons from an Apologist, Winsome and Sure” (loc 3269): Be the kind of teacher who regularly, naturally, joyfully, and confidently explains the reasons for studying your subject area. This section includes 9 different types of reasons and many specific examples from a variety of classes. Check out this example from a math class!
5. “A Feast of Knowledge” (loc 3707): Know interesting things about your field, delight in the knowledge, and let students in on the secrets. “We want our students to have knowledge constellations all throughout their minds” (loc 3703).
6. “Valued Within” (loc 4028): Get students to articulate how the skills, concepts, and strategies they’ve learned in your class intersect with their own interests, goals, and values—no easy task. For me, it’s easier to reel off reasons my discipline is important, or even to get students to repeat them.
7. “Woodenize All of It” (loc 4509): Like iconic basketball coach John Wooden, teach—specifically, respectfully, and clearly—every skill needed to succeed in your class. Wooden taught his college players how to put on their socks and shoes in order to not get blisters—”Woodenizing All of It” means teaching kids everything from how to come prepared to class to how to take notes to how to study.
8. “Define Success Wisely, Early, and Often” (loc 4953): One way to do this is by developing a clear, shared, important, attainable vision that is regularly discussed. As Stuart says, “We need to give students regular, robust opportunities to contemplate success in our classes, in school, and in life” (loc 4960).
9. “Unpack Outcomes, Good or Bad” (loc 5198): Get students assessing their outcomes, figuring out what strategies got the results they got, and what they want to keep or change (aka, after action review). This is especially important in the case of what Dave Stuart Jr. calls “effortful failure”—when students believe they’ve tried hard and still not succeeded.
10. “Normalize Struggle” (loc 5844): We as teachers need to shine a light on struggle—our own, famous people’s, classmates’, and everyone’s. Everyone was once a beginner. Beginners struggle. Struggle is part of growth. Growth is what we’re after.
Here are 2 of my favorite quotations:
- “In other words, schools are institutions of love—of this earnest seeking and serving of the fullness and wholeness of one another” (loc 256).
- “We’re after volition in the heart, in the very spirit. We’re after the genuine, thriving, bright will to learn and how to create the kinds of schools and classrooms that align with the realities of the human heart” (loc 389).
How about you? Why did you become a teacher? How motivated are your students? What do you find motivates them? What’s 1 of Stuart’s 5 beliefs that interests you? Which of the 10 strategies to increase student motivation resonate with you? What can you do to increase student motivation?
Get flourishing!
Kim
Get Flourishing 