A few weeks ago I wrote part one of a series where I broke down some of the most important questions I've encountered in my teaching career. If you want to read that post first, click here.
Here are the five questions:
- What am I doing that justifies having this group of students in a physical location at a set time?
- If my students weren't required to come, would they be here?
- Would I want to do the work I am assigning my students?
- What does this student need?
- What is my vision of my ideal classroom?
Since we have already addressed the first two, let's jump into questions three and four.
Would I want to do the work I am assigning my students?
I would be willing to bet some good money that you heard some variation of this sentiment today: "I'm so tired of my kids not turning in their work!"
I would also be willing to bet good money that the teacher who said that is also guilty of not filling out a form they thought was pointless, reading an email that seemed unimportant, or inputting data that they didn't think would ever be used.
We teachers are human just like our students. When something doesn't seem worth doing, we have no problem not doing it.
Now, an important distinction is that this question doesn't ask, "If I was a student, would I do the work I'm assigning?" For the most part, teachers were good at school as kids. Did I turn in all my work on time? Let's pretend so. The important part is that I turned in enough work to do well in my classes. Too often we judge the worthiness of our assignments through the lens that we approached school with, but the problem is that we are assuming our students have the same motivation to do well that we did. Furthermore, that assumes the kids today live in the same world, have the same motivations, experience learning, etc. the same way that we did. Not true at all.
This question asks, "Would I WANT to do the work I am assigning my students?"
The want is the key part there. It doesn't ask if we would be willing to do it; it asks if we would want to do it.
Now, this gets tricky. Do I want to pay my bills? Not necessarily. Do I want to go out for a run this evening when I get home from conferences at 7:30 and it's raining outside? Survey saaaaaaays...no way.
The distinction here is that those last two examples were focused on the activities, not necessarily the motivation. If I focus on paying my bills, I'm not motivated to do it, but if I focus on my desire to be financially secure and build wealth, then I actually want to put my money into an investment account instead of buying some new cool tech gadget.
The important element here is that so often we focus on the work that we are assigning instead of the why behind the work. More specifically, when we focus on the individual motivation of each student, that's when we really can tap into true empowerment instead of just engagement.
So the question really should start with, "What do my students want?" Then, once we have that answer, we can begin thinking about the type of work that fits into what they want. It's a losing battle to make really creative, inventive assignments that don't align with what the students actually want.
So that is my encouragement. Figure out what your students want and then build learning experiences around that.
For example, if you have a student who loves YouTube and wants to get into it somehow, they will want to do something that taps into that desire. Students are supposed to write an essay? You can make the coolest essay in the world, and they won't want to do it. Instead, what if, utilizing their motivation around video, couldn't they develop that essay into a YouTube video that analyzes that concept? Need to see that students understand a scientific concept? Yeah, they could take a test, but that same student would excel at something where they got to teach that concept in a YouTube video that would then go out to the rest of the world.
What it really comes down to is purpose. Are we spending time helping students discover their passions, guiding that towards a purpose, and then tapping into that purpose in our classroom?
If we can do that (and yes, I realize that is a big concept and not as simple as it sounds), we can create "work" that students will actually want to do.
I would also be willing to bet good money that the teacher who said that is also guilty of not filling out a form they thought was pointless, reading an email that seemed unimportant, or inputting data that they didn't think would ever be used.
We teachers are human just like our students. When something doesn't seem worth doing, we have no problem not doing it.
Now, an important distinction is that this question doesn't ask, "If I was a student, would I do the work I'm assigning?" For the most part, teachers were good at school as kids. Did I turn in all my work on time? Let's pretend so. The important part is that I turned in enough work to do well in my classes. Too often we judge the worthiness of our assignments through the lens that we approached school with, but the problem is that we are assuming our students have the same motivation to do well that we did. Furthermore, that assumes the kids today live in the same world, have the same motivations, experience learning, etc. the same way that we did. Not true at all.
This question asks, "Would I WANT to do the work I am assigning my students?"
The want is the key part there. It doesn't ask if we would be willing to do it; it asks if we would want to do it.
Now, this gets tricky. Do I want to pay my bills? Not necessarily. Do I want to go out for a run this evening when I get home from conferences at 7:30 and it's raining outside? Survey saaaaaaays...no way.
The distinction here is that those last two examples were focused on the activities, not necessarily the motivation. If I focus on paying my bills, I'm not motivated to do it, but if I focus on my desire to be financially secure and build wealth, then I actually want to put my money into an investment account instead of buying some new cool tech gadget.
The important element here is that so often we focus on the work that we are assigning instead of the why behind the work. More specifically, when we focus on the individual motivation of each student, that's when we really can tap into true empowerment instead of just engagement.
So the question really should start with, "What do my students want?" Then, once we have that answer, we can begin thinking about the type of work that fits into what they want. It's a losing battle to make really creative, inventive assignments that don't align with what the students actually want.
So that is my encouragement. Figure out what your students want and then build learning experiences around that.
For example, if you have a student who loves YouTube and wants to get into it somehow, they will want to do something that taps into that desire. Students are supposed to write an essay? You can make the coolest essay in the world, and they won't want to do it. Instead, what if, utilizing their motivation around video, couldn't they develop that essay into a YouTube video that analyzes that concept? Need to see that students understand a scientific concept? Yeah, they could take a test, but that same student would excel at something where they got to teach that concept in a YouTube video that would then go out to the rest of the world.
What it really comes down to is purpose. Are we spending time helping students discover their passions, guiding that towards a purpose, and then tapping into that purpose in our classroom?
If we can do that (and yes, I realize that is a big concept and not as simple as it sounds), we can create "work" that students will actually want to do.
What does this student need?
When I started teaching, I got REALLY good at understanding what students need. I broke down the Common Core State Standards so far that I had all of them virtually memorized, knew them inside and out, and could really quickly connect all of my assessments to the correct standards.
It was really good for me. I'm still glad that I did it. As a teacher, it helped me develop my understanding of the progression of learning students need to go through to get where they are supposed to be.
However, it didn't really help my students. The reality was that a large percentage of my students were walking in completely unprepared to reach the expectations put in place by those standards. My first few years involved a lot of frustration, both for me and my students. I was frustrated that my students weren't where they were supposed to be, and my students were frustrated by the fact that they weren't getting what they needed. The reality is that teaching to the standards and teaching to the test is often used to explain why we aren't teaching to our students. We've bastardized the word "rigor" so much that it now is used in schools to avoid meaningful differentiation and mastery-based learning because "rigor" means a 1200 Lexile text for any student who's in the 12th grade.
So, to clarify, I'm not asking, "What do students need?" It's a foundation, but it's not an end-point.
The next step most people take is to ask, "What do these students need?"
This gets us to a better spot. We start thinking about students as more important than the standards. We start thinking about formative assessment and using data to inform instruction and adapting lessons based on class needs. All of these are incredibly important and a really important step in differentiation.
This still isn't the MOST important question we could be asking. When ask ourselves, "What does THIS student need?" when we are working with our students, we start to look at them differently. Yes, we begin to look at their academics in a different way. We look at their current level and can decide what their next best steps would be, which is different than looking at class data and determine how to adapt a lesson.
However, the important part is that it takes our approach to education from a purely academic approach to a holistic view of educating a child. So often when I've asked myself this question, the answer isn't something academic. The answer often is that this child needs someone to listen, a high-five, or just someone to point out something they're doing well.
Even in those tense moments where a student is driving you nuts or they've blown up or they've just shut down and won't do anything, asking yourself, "What does this student need?" completely reframes the situation. It forces you to focus on real solutions that will matter for that students, not just the solution that matters for you.
The important part of this question is that it helps me focus on the social-emotional needs of my students just as much, if not more, than their academic needs. When I reframe my role from a conveyor of knowledge to someone who provides students with what they need, I find that my role in the classroom becomes so much more meaningful.
Without focusing on the student first, we will never be able to get them to focus on the learning.
I swear this wasn't planned, but when I looked back over what I'd written in this post, I came to essentially the same conclusion that I came to in my last post.
Education is about kids, not about content.
Full stop.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
And when that is the approach we take into the classroom with us every morning, we can create experiences that shape students into happy, successful, passionate people who walk out of our doors better than when they walked in.
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