I once worked for an amazing administrator named John Blazek. Mr. B. was a passionate school leader who managed his people with respect and dignity. He wasn’t perfect. Nobody is. But he fostered an environment that made it very easy for me to love my job, and that is no small thing.
I have come to understand that while the media is content to report on test scores there are far more important statistics we should be talking about. Mr. B. once said that the most important statistics we should talk about when comparing schools are the attendance rates for both students and teachers. Let’s face it, if neither population is showing up on a regular basis, what good is it to talk about test scores?
Teacher attendance is something that came up, among other things, in the now infamous documentary Waiting for Superman. The premise on this matter in the film is in many cases of “failing schools” teachers are leaving a good percentage of the instruction to substitute or temporary teachers while calling in sick or taking personal leave. I am not trying to appear critical of teachers who accept teaching positions in high-demand districts. The work of a classroom teacher is beyond challenging and it is amplified a great deal in the urban districts discussed in Superman. However, I think a more productive conversation on this matter should be related to how we in the profession address teacher motivation. What can we do to improve the conditions of our classrooms so that not only students are motivated to attend, but we are too?
Very early in my career a former teacher told me that he left the profession because he could do little about the outside influences that finally made his job unbearable. He cited low participation, lax application of discipline building-wide on the part of the administration, and limited parental involvement as the conditions that ultimately led to his burnout and departure from the classroom. As this former teacher shared his experience with me I didn’t hear relief in his voice, as if to say, “And I so happy I no longer have to deal with any of that anymore…” Instead all I heard was bitterness and regret. And I wondered at that point in my career how much control we truly have over our own motivation. Do we simply will ourselves to keep going? Or, can our work be self-motivating?
In a recent publication of Voices from the Middle Daniels and Pirayoff discuss how middle school teachers develop their own motivational working conditions in their article “Relationships Matter: Fostering Motivation through Interactions”. The article dresses directly this idea of self-motivation and inspires readers to build relationships in their teaching practices. As it turns out, Daniels and Pirayoff uncover something I think I have known all along: teaching is about people. The work we do to establish relationships will ultimately improve our working conditions and advance our teaching, yet this is the one thing that I was never taught as a pre-service teacher.
During my undergraduate years when I was learning how to be a English teacher content area knowledge was privileged over all other domains in my professional training. I attended a small, private college in central Kansas and I am certain the college was concerned about producing competent content-area experts. I am quite thankful that my college spent so much time steeping me and my classmates in literature, composition and the language arts. The content of an English class is often deeply inspirational and can be quite motivating. I am reminded of each time I have read chapter 6 in Call of the Wild aloud to a classroom of seventh graders and the moments throughout the year when a student volunteers to read his or her latest poem. These, and experiences just like them, are watershed moments that inspire the teacher and the students to keep going, to give more to the class. But the content plays just a small part in our work. It is the relationships we build make the work of classroom teachers valuable, unique and memorable. And it is relationships that ultimately connect us to our work and profession.
In their conclusion, Daniels and Pirayoff say, “Motivating learning environments develop through daily attention to our interactions with students, collaboration with colleagues, and focus on a productive class climate.” The authors will tell you that these are not groundbreaking revelations. However, these are the foundations we can establish to create a more motivating classroom. Even when the conditions are not so motivational around us, we do have a great deal of control in how we purposefully connect with our students, collaborate with our colleagues and set the expectations of our classrooms.
One area I have tried to develop in my practice now as a teacher-educator is helping pre-service teachers understand how to develop these important connections with their students and their students’ parents. There are, in fact, a number of valuable ways teachers can interact with the students under their care in order to improve the working conditions of the classroom. Over the years I have relied heavily on the work of Jim and Charles Fay and the Love and Logic approach. Their strategies are easy to communicate to pre-service teachers and they can make an observable impact.
Some of the things we talk about when discussing Love and Logic are:
- Students want to be noticed. Noticing positive behaviors will certainly benefit the productivity of the classroom. However, teachers often only notice bad behaviors. So, is it any wonder that students will act out when they want our attention?
- Parents need 10 pieces of good news before they hear one piece of bad news. Through a proactive communications plan teachers can share a number of success stories, small and large, with parents. When a problem arises the teacher knows he or she has a partner in the student’s parents. The same can be said about administrators too. If a teacher can routinely share the positive work that is happening in his/her classroom with the administration then he or she will also have an important partner, or ally, when it matters most.
- Arguments lead to power struggles; it is best to avoid power struggles. When attending a Love and Logic conference each speaker challenges attendees to reprogram how we think about those moments when a power struggle is about to break out. After attending a week-long L&L workshop one can easily avoid a power struggle like a jin jitsu master.
Finding your own path to motivation is important; it is by walking this path that we find a genuine connection to our work and forge our own connectedness. Daniels and Pirayoff, along with Fay and Fay, provide some insight on how we can find that path, but it is a path that we might ultimately need to cut for ourselves in the wilderness of our practice. Yes, there will be tall grass, vines, burrs and thorny hedges along the way, but with the right tools we find our way.