Motivating the unmotivated...

Over the years, I've watched them collapse, falling hard into the seats of the faculty work room, heard them muttering from the experience of working with students who wouldn't learn. I've listened to the long sighs of frustration and then the discussion of the "fact" that students are largely unmotivated, unwilling slugs taking up our time and best performances as teachers.

And though I, too, sometimes fell into this occasional form of educators "locker room talk" about students, I long ago found myself regretting my prior ignorance. Over the years, I have tried to take time to get to know students, to talk honestly with them about who they are and what they want...from me, the school, themselves, and their education. Listening to them, they have taught me a great deal and I no longer believe that the real issue regarding the ways many of them often perform -- or fail to perform -- in the classroom is as simply defined as motivation.

Students have made it clear that they embody many sources of frustration regarding the learning process before we ever encounter them, frustrations that are difficult to set aside for the 50 minutes at a time they are in a classroom. And they carry in many problematic attitudes about the nature of learning. They come from diverse backgrounds. Some arrive immediately after junior high, but many others come to the Upper School after years of academic and social struggling in the "mainstream" high school educational system.

In general, our students are likely to be apprehensive about traditional classrooms -- paper and pencil work and "book learning" -- and to perceive themselves as being outsiders when they consider the teacher's world. They are often uncomfortable with formality. They are often lacking study skills. And they are often struggling to work jobs, deal with financial responsibilities and limited funds, sometimes even having to assume an adult-like role in raising themselves and their siblings, all while trying to complete high school and, in most cases, prepare to go to college.

If all that isn't enough, coming to a new school challenges their social identity and often shakes their confidence as they leave the academic world of their friends and siblings. Many of them come from worlds that have been shaped by experiences far different from what they face here. When I think about all that is going on with them socially, psychologically, developmentally, and economically, it is no surprise that many students often do not see their classes or teachers as the pivotal points of their existence.

Even knowing all the problems they carry with them, we always want to believe that their classes should be something they cherish and to which they would give themselves over completely. We want the best from students. If we could have our way, they would come to us as active learners, seeking assistance and insight at every opportunity. They would thrive on academic challenge, and they would challenge us to teach better than we have ever taught before. They would question every aspect of their education and seek an understanding of the "how's" and "why's" of the factors that touch their naturally curious minds.

Oh, what a wonderful experience that would be ... but, let's face it, that's not what most students do, either here or at any school. What a disappointment! How easy it is to blame them! And how easy it is to get frustrated ... and how easy it is to fall into the belief that they are passive, uninvolved, apolitical airheads. How easy it is to assert that they shun responsibility, that they never question anything that relieves them of responsibility, and that they often drag other students down with them by using their social networks in the classroom to undermine the value of the lessons being presented to the potentially "good" students. How foolish to think we do not have to teach them how they learn and how to learn!

The fact is -- as we have learned -- classrooms don't have to be deadly arenas of mortal combat between teachers and students, and students who seem unmotivated don't have to remain in the unmotivated stage. But making a change often requires a great deal of time, as well as sometimes uncomfortable levels of soul-searching and rethinking on all our parts. And, most difficult to accept, it requires that we all -- students, faculty, families -- accept some of the blame for what we are given in our students' responses to our demands.

Many of them don't know that they have the right to ask for anything other than what they are given. For the most part, they are the products of years of experience in schools where they were essentially told to sit down, shut up, listen, and learn - an experience that taught them that the teacher is the source of all knowledge and that learning is something magically injected into them at some point without their awareness. They rejected that idea of voodoo education then and, as we've learned, they will reject it again if we push it, even though they struggle with the internal desire to "make it this time" in school.

Contrary to the occasional lounge talk I've heard and been part of, students are here spending their time and money because they do want to learn and because they want a better life for themselves. Granted, they often don't know how to acquire what they want or how to make themselves learn what is presented to them. But, when asked for their opinions (often a new experience for many of them), they express that there are instructional areas that they have strong opinions about. They include:

• Individualized instruction. They all want to have their individual needs met. They want to feel like they are more than part of a crowd, that their individual talents and abilities are respected and deemed worthy.
• Teachers who are real people, who recognize them as human beings -- teachers who care about them and not just their test performance.
• Wanting to be challenged and supported, not decimated and abandoned.
• Wanting caretakers who check on them regularly, who support their individual learning, who inform them individually of their progress, and who assign a variety of tasks that give them the opportunity to learn in modes that fit their individual styles and that are designed to meet their level of learning.
• Teachers who talk at their level, who can joke and take a joke, and who let them talk and learn with other students.
• Receiving clear, complete explanations and concrete examples, thorough (but brief) explanations of difficult concepts, and opportunities to have their questions answered.

When thinking about what students want, classes that deliver the same old message of "sit down, shut up, and listen so that you can memorize facts to dump onto a test sheet" are certainly not going to motivate them. It seems clear that most students are not necessarily unmotivated or unwilling learners; they are simply uninvolved in the depersonalized environment of the traditional classroom. They are willing to learn; they simply may not be able to endure the way they are taught. We know that if we really want to see motivation in our students, we --teachers and parents -- have to be motivated to continually challenge ourselves as well as to rethink what it is we are doing to and demanding of them. To paraphrase Dean Smith, the former basketball coach for the University of North Carolina, "We don't motivate anybody. We create the environment for motivation to develop."

How motivated are you?