Tag Archives: motivation

A “Bummer” Is When Children Are Spectators In Class

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How many “bummers” can a teacher have in a month of lessons and still be considered a quality teacher?  A “bummer” is a lesson that does not cause children to learn; it is just a “blah” class period of minimal engagement and no internalizing of knowledge, skills, or dispositions about what is learned.  Almost every student, whether a child in school today or an adult long graduated, knows what a “bummer” feels like because they happen.  When a lesson is a bummer, children are spectators in the classroom.

If you are or were an athlete, you know your “bummers”; a swing and a miss, a whiff, a missed block or tackle, a dropped ball, a missed shot, getting the ball taken away from you, getting pinned to the mat, knocking the bar of the high jump stand, or being DQ’d for a false start.  Most baseball players reach base safely every 2 or 3 times at bat.  That means 70-80% of the time they fail.  Interestingly, you can be a very successful player if your on base average is greater than 30% of your at bats.  Consider any sports statistics and there a lot of bummers.  Actually, there are a lot of bummers in life.

When a bummer happens, what is the “so what”?  In the micro-look, each bummer is a failed opportunity.  We easily say “the next time will be better”.  Even with a minimal lens, multiple bummers demonstrate a lack of skill or at least a lack of focus on being successful and we say “pay attention and get it right”.  With a larger lens, more problems are observable.  Children fall behind in what they need to learn.  If you follow the Packers this season, bummer games cause a lack of confidence in the team and fans begin to look for new players.

Bummers in school happen.  Statistically, we need to acknowledge they do.  Our interest is in limiting and eliminating bummers.  Using the micro-lens, each bummer lesson is a missed opportunity to cause children to learn and the minimal lens tells us that multiple bummers cause children to have gaps in their knowledge and skills that effect future learning. 

The WI DPI describes quality instruction (no bummers here) as follows:  “High quality instruction means curricula, teaching practices, and learning environments are standards-based, evidence-based, engaging, differentiated, culturally responsive, and data-driven”.

https://dpi.wi.gov/rti/resources/high-quality-instruction

In a school with board-approved curriculum, ongoing professional development, attention to student-centered education, and standardized accountability checks, we can unpack most of the DPI definition with an acknowledgement that veteran teachers are prepared to deliver successful lessons on a regular basis.  If this is the case, and I think it is, what causes bummer lessons?

We begin to “bum out” when we fail the set the learning “hook”.  We fail to spark children to learn by telling or showing them why what they are learning is important to them, how they can use what they learn now and in the future, and how successful learning today will cause future successful learning.

The DPI term “engagement” means more than getting children to do the work of learning.  For the non-DPI person, engagement is achieved when children “internalize what they are to learn, get excited about it because it is new and interesting or unique,  see self-value in what they will learn, and move beyond just doing the work of learning to seeing value in the learning”.  The most frequent cause of a bummer is that we do not hook children; we turn children into spectators in the classroom where the teacher is teaching.  Engaged children do not spectate.

A veteran teacher knows her stuff.  She has a developed a unit of instruction with scaffolded lessons she has taught before.   Perhaps she set the hook very well the first time she taught the lesson, but after teaching it multiple times she assumes children are being hooked because they were hooked in the past.  Across time, teachers and everyone else begins to take things for granted.  These assumptions cause us to skip over or minimize aspects of our teaching. 

Make no assumptions, especially about setting the hook for a lesson.  Each lesson taught this year is a new lesson for the children in class; they have not seen or experienced this learning before.  Eliminate a bummer in the making by accentuating their engagement.  Set the hook hard and deep so that no one is a spectator in their learning.

Limit or avoid bummer lessons and enjoy an escalation in student learning. 

Carpe the First Day

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The first day of a new school year is a singular event.  After the first day, all days are school days.  The first day is different; it is show time for children and adults.  Carpe the first day.  Show time is a magical and essential moment.  Make the most of it.

All eyes are big on day one.  For some, the first big eye is when a child gets on the school bus.  For all others, the first big eye is walking in the schoolhouse doors.  On day one, children cross a threshold of bus and/or school and become students.  This labeling matters.  During the summer, they are their parents’ children and the community’s kids.  In school, they are your students.

For teachers, the big eye is when students walk into the classroom.  A teacher without students is a professional educator awaiting the moment to teach.  The instant students enter a classroom teachable time starts.  The same is true for all instructional support staff.  The moment they engage with students, summer is over, and the school year is afoot.  Carpe that first moment with genuine positivity toward each student and a voracious learning about them as a class.

For custodians, food service, secretaries, transportation personnel who have prepared for weeks and days for day one, the first day of school shifts all work from preparing to serving the school.  Floors are polished, snack and lunch menus are planned and published, school materials are ordered, delivered, sorted, and distributed, class lists are printed all in anticipation of day one.  When children become students, all of these and hundreds more tasks become actions repeated and maintained for a school year’s time.  Day one matters to everyone in the school.

Carpe the day, don’t squander it.  A smile and calling a student by name (pronounced correctly) as they cross thresholds tell a child “I see you.  Your success as a student in our school is important to me.  I am prepared for you.  We start right now!”  When we begin day one with the message “I see you and you are important”, we initiate a respecting of each other that pays dividends for months to come. 

The swell of a summer’s planning and preparation for principals does not peak on day one, but continues to a crescendo somewhere into September when the benefits of planning and preparation are observable facts in the work of the school.  Day one exemplifies the historic role of the school principal as the school’s principal teacher.  Carpe the day.  As a teacher greets students to a classroom, principals greet students to a school.  As teachers carpe day one to build respect for all in the classroom, the principal carpes day one to build a respectful schoolhouse.  When parents delivering their children to school see the principal “out front”, a principal reinforces the parent’s perception that this school is a good place for their children.

We know from recent polling that more than 80% of students look forward to the first day of school for social reasons – they will be with their old friends and will make new friends.  Carpe that by observing these very visible networks.  On day two you will know better about student grouping – who wants to be with whom and who needs to be integrated into the web of students.

We know from polling that more than 35% of students prize school for its athletics and activities.  On day one we assist student/athletes and student/actors and student/leaders and student/musicians to optimize immediate motivation opportunities to facilitate new learning.  The area of school that less than 25% of students look forward to is deskwork.  Carpe that low anticipation with highly engaging moments, glimpses, and previews of what they will learn in the next weeks.  Carpe all that you can learn about your students on day one and sew what you learn for reaping during the school year.

The first day of school comes but once a year.  It is a significant day for everyone in the school community.  Carpe the day and reap the benefits of your seizing all that day one is.  Day one is gone on day two.

Being What We Teach

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Schooling in the pandemic exemplified what Tom Paine labeled, “…these are the times that try men’s souls…”.  Every educator was Paine’s “summer soldier” called to perform a duty – being the kind of teacher, staff member, and school leader they were not trained to be – and they performed valiantly. 

On the best of days, the task of sustaining continuous teaching and learning for all children was difficult and on the worst of days it was almost insurmountable.  No one was trained for studio teaching of remote students on their laptops, pads, and phones.  No one was trained to make and deliver school meals to children at home.  No one was trained to make on-demand decisions of opening or closing schools, quarantining classes of children, or masking or unmasking.  No one was trained to say “this schoolhouse is closed – you cannot come in”.  Yet, school faculty, staff, and leaders did what needed to be done.

We teach our children to be problem solvers – we were.  We teach our children to use evidence and data to make decisions – we did.  We teach our children to be collaborative and collegial – we were.  We teach our children to be flexible and adapt to new challenges – we were.  We teach our communities that the education of all children is essential – we delivered.  We teach our parents that school and home are partners in child development – we upheld our part.  We teach our children that sometimes we cannot make everyone happy, but we can try our hardest to make them understand – we tried.

In educational theory, we know the best driver for doing our best work is our personal intrinsic motivation.  I point to intrinsic drivers – our intellectual, emotional, passionate, and compassionate reasons that compel us to action.  During our trying times, each educator’s intrinsic motivation was the difference maker.    Schoolyard signs declaring educators as “essential workers” caused smiles of recognition, but these words did not get us up in the morning.  Honking horns and texts of encouragement were background appreciation.  An intrinsic motivation is an intangible that lives in a person’s soul, or it does not.  Although the theory of transitioning from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation reads well in our education textbooks, it only works if a person can be intrinsically motivated.  Without debate, pandemic educators possessed an intrinsic “trigger” that moved them into action even when doing so put their personal and family safety at risk.

At the closing of every major battle, not just military, there is a deceleration in the frantic work of struggle accompanied with the realization that “I survived”.  The struggle mentality does not stop, it eases away.  The heightened risk of serious illness and death has subsided although there are still surges of danger.  The coming down from months of working “above and beyond” built both a resilience and a fatigue and each must be recognized – honor the fatigue and celebrate the resilience.  In our opened schools with optional masking and other mitigations and our paralleling ongoing positive covid tests with measles or chickenpox, we look at each other as survivors now returning to our usual work lives.

No medals are awarded, and no banquets are held.  Yet, professionally we look at each other as stronger educators and our schools as worthy places for what we achieved.  We were what we teach our children to be and as time passes our graduates will appreciate this truth.  The intrinsic calling to be an educator of children prevailed.