Category: Lessons from Middle School

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The Day I “Scienced”

I can remember very clearly the day I explicitly used the scientific method to make a decision, and the stakes were very high.

I was a seventh grader at Davis Middle School in Columbus, OH. Mr. Verachuck was my faithful and patient science teacher who, like Mr. Jarzab the year before, guided us through the scientific method as we completed a number of experiment-based lab assignments.

Mr. Verachuck had a long room in the middle of the seventh grade wing. The tables were set up in rows, and I can remember inquiry being at the center of every lecture, every lesson and every learning opportunity every single day. The scientific method was the foundational concept we would apply to the questions and mysteries we encountered in class.

A project that I still think about nearly 25 years later is the egg box project. The set up was simple: Using a shoebox and any other materials you like, design a vehicle that, when dropped from thirty feet in the air, will protect three large eggs. The execution, however, wasn’t that simple. We worked in teams of two, and my partner and I tried several different approaches before we landed on a simple design using insulation foam. In all of our test cases, the design held up. On the day of the drop, however, only two of our three eggs survived.

There is a great deal of heat in  the launch of a new concept. Though our trial runs of dropping our egg box from the top of the locker bays and the second floor window of my house were successful, the ultimate drop from the Genie lift 30 feet in the air in the domed gym at Davis Middle School was nearly a complete failure. To this day I still wonder how we could have improved the box to keep all three eggs safe. Obviously, I have never let this episode go. It feels incomplete. And, I have certainly used this experience to make better decisions when working with fragile materials (or transporting eggs from the grocery store).

Learning can do that. It can help you leverage failure in such a way that makes a positive, lasting impact. While two of the eggs didn’t survive, I had just worked on an extensive project that allowed me to develop and test a series of hypotheses through data collection, revision and trial and error. And that still resonates with me today.

Fast forward a few more months. I am still in seventh grade. Mr. Verachuck is still my teacher. After a long day at school I checked in with my dad via telephone once my younger brothers and I were safely off the bus and in the house. At the conclusion of the conversation he said, “Hey, listen I have two tickets to tonight’s Michigan/Ohio State basketball game. I can only take one of you, so try to sort that out before I get home.”

Could this be true? My dad had two tickets to the biggest basketball game of the year and one of us was going with him. I knew immediately my youngest brother would not be interested, so I asked him first.

“Nah.” He said simply while playing a video game.

Joe, my middle brother, on the other hand, would be a little more difficult to persuade. I really wanted to go to this game.

“Hey, Joe.” I began. Joe was shooting hoops in the driveway. Though he was younger than me, he was far superior in all matters of athletics. I can count on one hand the number of times I have ever beat him in a one-on-one a game.

“Dad has a couple of tickets to tonight’s OSU game. He asked me to work it out on who would go with him.”

I let the statement rest in the air for a moment. He was nonchalant, but I could tell he was interested.

“Cool.” Is all he said.

Waiting for just a brief moment I said, “Flip you for it.”

“Sure.” He said.

A coin was used to make several decisions in my childhood. It was a fair and impartial way to decide who would sit in the front seat on long trips, who would get the last can of Pepsi in the fridge, or who would clear the table after dinner. No greater decision was made in a given day than “heads or tails?”

As the words “Flip you for it?” left my mouth I was reminded that I had been on quite the cold streak lately with flipped decisions. I decided that such an important choice between heads and tails needed to be studied further.

I scrounged around my room to find a quarter, a dime and a nickel and ran 100 test flips to see how often heads and tails appeared with each coin. In my test, both the quarter and the nickel were almost right at 50/50. It was uncanny given my recent string of bad luck. One would think with these results I would have had a more even record. The dime, however, had a slight edge to tails.

Later that evening when dad got home he asked who was going to the game. I shared with him that Joe and I were interested in going and we agreed to flip for the chance to go with him.

“Let’s find a coin.” He said.

“Here’s one.” I said, providing the dime from my test.

“I’ll call it.” I said.

Dad flipped it up int he air.

“Tails!” I called out with what sounded like great confidence.

The reveal from the flip showed tails.

I have few memories from the game. I remember watching Chris Weber from Michigan land a 360 dunk early in the first half that sucked the air out of the arena, and I am pretty sure Ohio State lost the game. However, I clearly remember the process I used to change my fortunes, to finally win a flip decision.

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Who are Middle Level Students?

Middle school students are a dynamic group of people who, all at once, seem to embody endless hope and paralyzing despair.  But one thing I know is that middle level students are genuinely good-natured people.  And, to me, this is one characteristic of tweens and teens that is often overlooked in the broader conversation about who middle level students are.

I don’t know if other teachers do this, but when I was in the middle of a school year and a middle school student said or did something that seemed odd, I would often remember that I once did something very similar. I’d like to pursue this thought in later posts because I think we often have a more refined memory of who we were when we were younger.  As a middle school student I was clumsy, awkward and I often struggled in science and math classes.  But now that I am an adult I can see that Math and Science aren’t so bad.  In fact, I have grown to love these disciplines and I have even participated in these fields professionally.  And I think sometimes I tried to overlook the difficulty some have with these types of things.  I overcame them and I often gloss over my memories of the truly dreadful struggles I experienced.  Surely my revised memories often affect how I talk with students about similar challenges they are having. Anyway, I think this point could be revisited in a longer post–how our revised memories of our own experiences shape our expectations.

From my experience, middle level students are some of the best examples of human kindness that I have ever met. They know, first-hand, what it means to struggle, to search, stretch and strain in order to find the answers to life’s most challenging questions.

A search for a unique identity ranks as one of the many challenges a middle level student will address at some point in their development.  I can remember watching the wild changes some of my students would make through out the year in search for their own personalities and to answer the ultimate question, “Who am I?” On one occasion I had a student stand confidently at my desk and say, “Mr. Skillen, I have decided that I will be the most annoying person anyone knows.”

He was clearly looking for a more concrete position in our community.  But he never truly developed as the most annoying student in the school or even in our class.

While we can not often think of anything redemptive about our own time as adolescents, I tell you this group of people is redeeming.

Logan was a quite kid, but he became even more quiet when September turned to October his seventh grade year.

“How are you?” I would ask.

“Fine.” He would say.

Later that month during a passing period in between classes I got an email from my mom.  She was leaving my step-dad after 11 years of marriage.  I felt like an emotional typhoon had crashed into my classroom as the words of my mom’s note unfolded on my computer.  The bell rang and I hesitated.  Searching for the starting point of the lesson I spoke in broken phrases to get the class started.  I struggled through the lesson, but we made it through.  40 minutes later when the dismissal bell rang Logan waited for everyone to leave.

“You OK?” He asked.

“I’m fine.” I said.  “I just wish adults would act like adults; not like kids.”

There was a pause…

“Are your parents getting  divorce?” Logan asked.

“Yeah.  I think they are.” I said.

“Mine are too.” He said.

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An Invitation to Imagine: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 4)

The imagination, when accessed and exercised regularly, can unlock a new world of possibilities.

Teaching requires a great deal of imagination. The extent to which the imagination is used to plan, organize, and execute instruction varies case by case, but in my experience, the imagination is critical in developing the rhythm, beauty, discourse, and possibilities enjoyed by each student enrolled.  The imagination enables me, the instructor, to examine new territory and related fields of study to bring variety and vibrancy to the class discussions, writing assignments, and assessments, thereby embracing a multi-modal, multi-dimensional learning experience for my students.

The imaginative teacher considers all possibilities in how he or she conducts a course.  While guidelines are established in the class syllabus, there is flexibility, when necessary, in expanding these guidelines and boundaries to allow those enrolled to progress to new levels of knowingness and understanding.  One way in particular that I have tried to creatively expand my teaching practice is to look to digital platforms to extend the work in my courses. Like most teachers, I read several drafts of my students’ written work before it is finally evaluated and graded. And like most, I often provide extensive written feedback on my students’ papers so that each student can focus his or her energy on improving his or her composition in the areas that need the most attention. In order to make this a more memorable learning experience I have also leveraged screen casting tools and web conferencing platforms to provide active feedback to my students during writing and creative processes. So, when students receive written feedback from me on an essay, research paper, or creative piece, they also receive a short video of me explaining my evaluation of their work. This approach often takes more time than simply providing written comments, but I believe this is time well spent. I have found that students respond more quickly and far more positively to verbal and visual feedback and their improvement is my ultimate goal.

The imaginative teacher understands that his or her role in the classroom is, at times, fluid.  Greene (1995) suggests that a teacher who instills a culture of active learning will create a “classroom situation most provocative in thoughtfulness and critical consciousness” (p. 23).  Green goes on to explain that these classrooms are those that “teachers and learners find themselves conducting a kind of collaborative search, deliberate attempt to break through ‘the cotton wool’ of ‘nondescript’ daily life, which Virginia Woolf thought marked by repetitions and banality” (p. 23). I want to create a unique learning experience for those who enroll in my classes at Elizabethtown College.  I am admittedly borderline maniacal on this point. After all, if the student doesn’t remember the course, did I really teach them anything? My hope is that when students reflect on their experiences in my classes they do so with the sense that it was not justanother class—that they saw something new in themselves they had not seen before.

Incorporating the imagination, and its creative power, into each course I teach is important because I believe it injects new energy into the learning process—energy that is often missing in most K-12 learning experiences.  In just under one decade, a great deal of creativity and imagination has been cut from most middle level and secondary curricula—especially for those learners who find themselves in the bottom three quartiles of their graduating classes.  Constant remediation, skill and drill test preparation, and general standardization limit the educational experiences of America’s youth by focusing on a small set of literacy skills—those that are tested.  Learning is a quest or a journey of possibilities.  A hard-line policy driven by objective, measurable standards tends to suggest that at a certain point learning should stop.  A more subjective approach celebrates learning that seeks the unknown and the incomplete yet to be explored.  Again, Greene (1995) provides an excellent example from literature by suggesting that Ishmael, of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) is an illustration of the incompleteness of man.  Melville says, “I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete must be for that very reason infallibly faulty” (p. 135).

I believe this is perfect place to meet our students at the collegiate level—with the understanding that we, all of us, are incomplete.  With creativity, ingenuity, and a little imagination, we have a remarkable opportunity to reintroduce our students to the joy of learning. How can we do this? Sometimes such an experience can begin with a simple invitation.

Many of the courses I teach require students to venture into some form of writing—creative, persuasive, expository or otherwise. I often hear from students at the beginning of each semester say, “Dr. Skillen, I don’t write all that well. I hope you are okay with that.” Or, “Dr. Skillen, creative writing really isn’t my thing, but I need this class to graduate on time. Are you OK with that?”

My response to all varieties of this question is a resounding, “Yes!” I accept these sentiments because in my experience I know these feelings of inadequacy are often the result of a single interaction in high school or middle school. At some critical moment in the less-than-confident student’s academic experience a teacher probably gave the impression that the student could not write. When I encounter students who are not confident writers, I simply invite them to try. If they honestly make an effort to complete the required assignments, I believe we can work together through a rigorous and involved writing process to help the student develop something he or she will be ultimately proud of. My classes are dynamic, dialogical, and multimodal. We employ a process-minded approach to all matters of my course and I explicitly invite students to embrace our process of learning and writing.

The imaginative teacher harnesses the limitations of the current educational system to ignite a desire for learning.  Yes, each course is set on a specific timeline, and, yes, even at the college level, standards—or student learning outcomes—must be met.  However, by making proper use of every class meeting, framing academic activity within the context of the course, and engaging each student to access their imaginations, the teacher approaches meaningful and memorable instruction.  And, if we do our job correctly, we will pass on a legacy of critical thinking and authentic inquiry to those enrolled in our courses. While these instructional characteristics are often difficult to illustrate in class syllabi (Appendix B), my hope is that my dynamic approach to teaching is seen through the accounts and reflections of former and current students.

These three pillars of my teaching philosophy and methodology have been molded through the passing of each academic year. This process began when I enthusiastically opened my own classroom in 2003 and continues to solidify through every opportunity I have to teach.

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An Invitation to Imaging: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 3)

Great teachers know when to teach and when to guide.

In his book What the Best College Teachers Do Ken Bain (2004) articulates what I believe to be the most powerful description of a college teacher’s responsibility to his or her students.  In doing so, he says,

[The] best teachers often try to create what we have come to call a ‘natural critical learning environment.’ In that environment, people learn by confronting intriguing, beautiful, or important problems, authentic tasks that will challenge them to grapple with ideas, rethink their assumptions, and examine their mental models of reality. (p. 18)

As I have worked in teacher education for seven years, I can speak to the importance of a well-established learning environment.  There are in fact entire volumes written on this topic (i.e. Teaching with Love & Logic: Taking Control of the Classroom by Jim Fay and David Funk (1995), The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong (2001) & Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments by David Joassen and Susan Land (2012)). It is widely understood that by creating the right conditions, learning will often occur.  I believe that by understanding their role in the classroom, great teachers can make an honest attempt at creating such an environment.

If I were to combine every effective strategy, approach, belief and method from my personal professional practice in a large stock pot and boil it down, I believe two simple elements would remain: teaching and guiding.  As a teacher, I am an expert in composition studies, I understand there are aspects of the writing process that can be taught effectively to emerging writers. I am an expert in curriculum studies, and I am passionate about infusing instructional technology throughout the landscape of education.  My expertise in these areas, as well as related fields in the language arts, is often the focus of my courses.  And through a rather traditional model of higher education instruction, I deliver lectures and facilitate discussions on theory, form, structure, analysis, and authorship.  As a teacher, I assess and measure student development throughout the entire course.  I adjust and adapt my content delivery in order to address questions or concerns from students.  I create assignments and determine deadlines.  And, when it is all over, I assign grades—marks of achievement, outcomes of learning, or one more number in figuring the cumulative GPA. In my opinion, this is only part of the teaching profession.

Whether in the classroom or in the field observing pre-service teachers, there are times when a professor must step back and allow students to advance their own understandings.  In doing so, the teacher operates more as a guide, providing support and advice as students work to solve problems and demonstrate their skills in a given task.  Admittedly, teachers take a risk in devoting time within the course to allow for student-directed study.  However, there are significant advantages to symbolically dropping the reins and allowing the course to run wild for a bit.  From a purely existential stance, such instances offer learners the opportunity to carve their own path, to experience learning on their own terms.

Looking back once again on my own education, I can honestly say that I remember very little of what was said in a class.  However, I have very clear memories of what was experienced in Kindergarten through my graduate course work.  In these moments, the teacher allowed me to find my own path to success or failure. When I visit with former students, whether they are students I have worked with in the middle school or college classroom, they rarely reflect on a lecture I provided on writing pedagogies or plot structures.  Instead, students tell me how much they enjoyed creating, discussing, analyzing and experiencing the content of the course.

Author and educational philosopher bell hooks (1994) refers to these experiences as part of a “progressive, holistic engaged pedagogy” (p. 15) that has the power to press the limits of traditional teaching styles.  hooks (1994) explains further,

I have been most inspired by those teachers who have had the courage to transgress those boundaries that would confine each pupil to a rote, assembly-line approach to learning.  Such teachers approach students with the will and desire to respond to our unique beings… (p. 13)

Clearly, hooks is calling for a more engaged approach to teaching, and in doing so she is calling on participants, teachers, students and supervisors not to settle into a “passive consumer” (p. 14) role.  Rather, hooks encourages everyone connected to the classroom to contribute regularly to the progress of everyone else involved.  While hooks suggests this is a courageous approach to teaching, I would hesitate to categorize active teaching strategies as dangerous.  When a teacher allows for self-actualization or student-guided instruction, he or she does gamble with the time allotted for the class.  However, in returning to the second core principle, “Great teachers know when to teach and when to guide,” a good teacher knows how to utilize these approaches to the benefit of his or her students.  He or she weighs the risks and the rewards and seizes moments in a class to lead through a dynamic lecture, as well as guide students to new appreciations and perspectives.  Striking a balance between teaching and guiding requires finesse and professional judgment that develops through experience in the classroom.

Transitioning from the teacher to the guide establishes a new dynamic in the classroom.  In this way learners can stretch their own understandings in directions that the teacher in front of the room may have neglected to emphasize or highlight in his or her lectures and presentations.  This new dynamic has the power to provide fresh context and perspective to the content of the course.  And, in courses specific to the humanities, I believe there is always room for expansion in this regard.

No matter the level of course I am teaching, I believe the students can bring valuable information and insight to the rest of the class. When operating as a guide, I ask students to develop a deep understanding of a topic or text related to the content of the course. With my guidance students then prepare a short presentation for the class on the new information they have gathered during their time of research and preparation. This single approach allows each student to take ownership of one critical component of the course and it expands the content covered and digested by the class exponentially.

When choosing to operate as a guide in the classroom the teacher takes an opportunity to be inspired as well.  In an environment where the teacher and the students are actively engaged there is no limit to where the combined efforts of everyone involved can take the content of the course.

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An Invitation to Imagine: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 2)

Experience is often a great teacher.

This principle may seem out of place in a so-called philosophy of teaching and learning written by a teacher. If one can learn all he or she needs from experience, then why on Earth does our culture need organized education? I believe new experiences can both inform our understanding of our past and shape our future. And throughout our lived experiences we often encounter a number of guides who help us make sense of our experiences and therefore forge lasting impressions in our memories. In some cases a qualified, observant teacher can serve as this guide. Sometimes these encounters are big and can change a life altogether. But, in most cases, these experiences are small but equally liberating and powerful.

In my own experience as a student, there were times that I certainly didn’t understand the significance of a well-informed guide (or mentor).  As a sophomore in college majoring in English, I enrolled in a British literature survey course that included the works of William Shakespeare.  At first, I found Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter to be clumsy and confusing. No matter how I divided up his words, evaluated the lyrical gymnastics necessary to maintain the flow and rhythm of his plays and sonnets, identifying the nuances of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter was impossible for me.  When I clearly demonstrated my trouble in assessment after assessment, my professor attempted to show me how the very same lyrical pattern I was struggling to grasp could be found in other modes of media. I wouldn’t hear of it. To pass the class I put on a pair of blinders and I charged on through the course—working twice as hard through the moments of struggle and frustration. I memorized foot placement of a few lines here and there, and maybe I fooled the professor in giving me a passing grade in the course.  But, I wasn’t fooling myself.

Two years later, during my senior year, I was listening to the radio when the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman” came blaring through one and a half working speakers of my teal green 1996 Chevy S-10.  Maybe it was the solid backbeat laid down by Charlie Watts.  Perhaps it was the unmistakable lyrical interpretation provided by Mick Jagger.  In any case, I remember singing along, tapping my thumb on the steering wheel, and identifying the iambic pentameter structure of each verse.  I immediately turned my truck back to my apartment, pulled out my Bevington anthology of Shakespeare’s plays from the dusty bookshelf, and saw the beauty of metered verse for the very first time.  The British literature class was over, I had turned in my final exam two years prior, and a grade had already been decided.  But, the skill of identifying iambic pentameter did not crystallize for me within the course calendar.

In this case, through the timeless guidance of the Rolling Stones, I finally unlocked the secret of Shakespeare’s poetic style. This one moment not only informed me of a very important aspect of British literature that I missed in the context of an academic class, but it also gave me important insight on how a well-meaning professor was trying to help me. I had ultimately found one possible way that I might be able to teach students to engage in content they find difficult or obtuse.

The majority of the courses I have taught thus far at Elizabethtown College are in the first-year writing program.  EN 100 Writing and Language is a foundational course that offers students the opportunity to expand and sharpen their academic writing skills.  As an experienced teacher, I know that not all students arrive with the same previous experiences.  This is one challenge that I have attempted to meet head-on by engaging a number of techniques and technologies that help foster a sense of community in my classes. In my EN 100 courses students collaborate on a number of small and large projects, building on each other’s strengths and learning from one another when necessary. I also attempt to extend the learning of our course through web-based communications, like Twitter, to engage learners in a variety of conversations related to the course material. For example, particularly during election years, my students and I have carried out a number of Twitter chats during live political debates to discuss the uses of propaganda and politicalspeak. Together, we examine the language unfolding in the media around us in an attempt to become better informed.

By the end of the course, I know that most students will meet my expectations for the class.  And a few may not internalize the important concepts of our course at all.  However, I hope that at some point in the near future something we discussed, viewed, or read will resonate in their academic, professional, or personal lives. If I may but serve as a mentor or guide in those critical moments, I believe experience can truly inform those who are open to learn from it.

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An Invitation to Imagine: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 1)

Earlier this year I began my twelfth year as a teacher. For nearly one-third of my life I have dedicated myself to creating memorable and lasting learning opportunities that shape how people see themselves and interpret their surroundings. I began my career as a middle school language arts teacher in Maize, KS. Working in a middle school comes with its own occupational hazards. The middle years are often a minefield of emotions and hormones that pose a serious threat to an adult’s sanity and livelihood. However, the greatest risk that one must contend with while teaching at a middle school is that it is dangerously endearing.

The pace and rhythm of a middle school language arts classroom requires a great attention to detail and a focused game plan. The work is excruciating but doubly rewarding and I point to these first four years at Maize South as perhaps the most influential in shaping my teaching practice. From these first years of classroom experience, I have built a dynamic and meaningful teaching practice that has informed my professional development and my academic work. The pages that follow will illuminate on the high points of my academic record—the spirit of which was born in room A-101 of Maize South Middle School.

Foundations

Learning, the best variety of it, happens naturally throughout the course of a person’s lived experiences.  We teachers are lucky to witness that moment, when “a-ha” meets bliss, within the limitations of a normal academic term.  However, much to the frustration of the most passionate teacher, it can take years for some learners to finally grasp a critical concept once covered at length in an academic class.  I understand much of what we discuss in my classes at Elizabethtown College may in fact be realized in the minds of my students well down the road in another course or in their lives beyond college. It is, therefore, my teaching mission, and ultimate intended outcome, to create quality, memorable and lasting learning opportunities for all learners—in class, online, or in attendance at a professional conference.  This important goal is founded on three simple principles that characterize my philosophy and methodology of teaching.

  1. Experience is often a great teacher.
  2. Great teachers know when to teach and when to guide.
  3. The imagination, when accessed and exercised regularly, can unlock new worlds of possibilities.

These three principles overlap and weave in and out of all aspects of my teaching practice.  They are present in the construction, enactment and reflection of every course, workshop, or presentation.  And they are the foundations that I hope to pass on to the next generation of classroom teachers.

In the next three posts of this series, I will expand on each of the three foundational points listed above. 

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Lessons I Learned in Middle School: The Deepest Cut

Teaching in a middle school is tough. All teaching is tough, but the work of a middle school teacher is extremely labor intensive because there is a certain unpredictability with the clientele. This is probably one of the more widely exhausted stereotypes one puts on middle school students, but it is true.  Middle level students experience a number of emotional changes during the three years they are in middle school.  Consequently, a middle school can often feel like an emotional land mine field.  The work is excruciating but doubly rewarding.

Regardless of one’s content area, a middle school teacher is present for all sorts of turns in a student’s life.  You are there for highs and the lows, but mostly the lows.  I can remember working late one night when the basketball coaches posted the final cut list for their teams. My room was located down the hall from the gym and my desk was like a front row seat for the aftermath that followed those decisions.

A rush of five or six young men raced out to the front parking lot of the school to tell their moms and dads they had secured a spot on the team. A slower flow of boys followed.  Some had their heads down in disappointment; others had a confident stroll to their ride home.

I attended middle school at Davis Middle School in Dublin, OH. The large middle school boasted a well known athletic program.  Due to my build and lack of natural athletic talent, it became very clear to me extremely early in my stint at Davis Middle that I was likely not going to be a school athlete. In the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year I tried out for the golf team.  I thought if there was one team I could make as a walk-on it would be the golf team. I finished dead last in the tryouts.  I not only understood adolescent disappointment; I lived it.

Twenty minutes after the parade of initial emotions following the basketball cuts had been announced I heard a quiet knock at my classroom door. It was Mark.  I never had Mark in class, but I knew him well.  He was a likable kid that everyone spoke highly of.

“Can use your phone to call my dad?” He asked.

“Sure, I said.”  Directing him to the classroom phone at the front of the room.  “Dial 9 first to get an outside line.”

“Right.” He said.

Mark was careful to mute his speech when his dad picked up on the other end of the telephone.  I can remember he covered the receiver with his hand as he whispered in to the phone. I felt as though I should leave the room.  As I stood up to walk out Mark hung up the phone.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Yeah.  I think.”  Mark said.  Then he paused.  He made eye contact with me for a moment as if to say, No, I’m not OK.  But I am not going to tell you why.

Mark looked away.  Then he broke down in tears.

I offered him a seat and asked if he wanted to talk.

I don’t remember exactly what Mark said.  It was kind of heard to follow–as you can probably imagine.  But while we waited for his dad to pick him up from basketball tryouts he shared with me the deep frustration and sadness he felt in that moment. He didn’t hold any grudges, but he was mad at himself.  He was convinced that if he could have run just a little faster, jumped just an inch higher, or made just one more free-throw he would have made a spot on the team.

If it was indeed that close for him, if he was essentially one basket away from making the team, then this was a very different variety of disappointment than I had experienced ten years earlier when I was cut from the golf team.

From this conversation I got the impression that Mark would take some time to get passed this funk he was in.  To be so close and walk away with nothing in return would be heart-breaking. A couple of days later while on lunch duty I found Mark in the crowded cafeteria.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“Great!” he said. “I found out last night that I made a club basketball team.  We travel to Kansas City next month to play a tournament with teams from around the country. It’s going to be awesome!”

With a chuckle I resigned to myself, “Huh… Middle school.”

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Connectedness in Teacher Motivation

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.