This is the second post in a series on how I approach the work of teaching. If you missed the first post, check it out here:
When I think about experimentation in the classroom now, I think more in terms of making my lessons better, but I also think about how to motivate students to want to do the work and engage in the learning in ways I didn’t understand when I first started teaching.
In the early years, I thought about motivation in a tactical sense — what are specific teacher actions I can do to keep students focused? My network and school taught new teachers many tried and true methods, such as praising individual students, using positive narration*, generating competition, or setting a challenge. All of these do work. However, I approached each of these actions very mechanically, so my praise, narration, or challenges often sounded canned. These actions and attempts to motivate occurred in isolation — there was no connecting or cohesive message in my class that served to give the content I was teaching real purpose. I didn’t explain to kids why what they were learning mattered, and thus why they should be motivated to learn it. While attempts to motivate in isolation still work for many students, canned lines often fail for the toughest students a teacher might have. And boy, can just a few of those students really swing a whole class in the wrong direction.
Nowadays, one of the things I experiment with and spend some intentional time thinking about is how to better motivate all students in a class. I think about the central messages I want to convey to my class. This kind of thinking is still very new to me, and I have a lot to learn. Here are a few messages that I’ve carried through the course of the school year in my class that I’m hoping to convey to students:
It is okay to make mistakes in this class. The math that you do, whether correct or incorrect, has meaning. Math is designed to help us model and understand the real world, so none of the math you do is ever in isolation.
The purpose of this class is to become better mathematical thinkers.
What if you showed up every day believing that you already possess the capacity to become the mathematical thinker that you want to be?
You are not alone. You have each other, and I will be there with you every step of the way.
Most recently:
Questions often have more power than answers. Learning to ask good questions has the power to change perspectives, shift mindsets, and generate new ideas. While answers are important, they do not always carry this kind of weight.
These ideas feel particularly important to me this year against the backdrop of the pandemic, racial justice, and economic hardship. I’m hoping there’s something transferable in these messages that applies more broadly, not just to math class.
The real work has been in figuring out how to keep the messages alive on a regular basis. How can I grow these ideas and plant seeds that become relevant later on in the year? What are the moments that I can bring these ideas out more explicitly, and what are the moments that I can highlight the same ideas with subtlety? How will these ideas evolve over the course of the time I spend with my students? How can I get more kids to buy-in?
I don’t have those answers. I don’t know if anyone does. Those are the moments that I find myself experimenting with. What is the impact on the class when I share a certain sentiment, or present a specific artifact? When something works, why? When something flops, why**? What adjustments can I make next time to maximize the impact I’m looking for?
The things I’ve tried to motivate kids day-to-day while keeping the messages alive run the gamut from corny math jokes, memes, and brain teasers to academic reflections about their grades, larger conversations about how to have a successful mathematical discussion, and what it means to effectively collaborate during group work. This work is truly ongoing and no one structure will reach every student.
I don’t experiment as much with the actual messages themselves now, during the middle of the school year, because I want the class to feel cohesive. But experimenting with the messages themselves is not something that’s out of the picture upon the start of a new school year.
There is always something that can be refined and improved upon. I’m starting to think that is the driving spirit behind experimentation.
*Positive narration is when teachers call out (narrate) students who are engaged and/or following directions. Right after the teacher gives directions for students to complete some task, for example a warm-up at the start of class, it might sound something like this: “Emma is starting on the warm-up independently. Jose is starting on the warm-up. Shyann is organizing her work in a table for #1.”
**A lot of times it’s as simple as: the directions were not clear.
