Motivating kids is key to their success

By Kent Pekel, September guest blogger

How does Minnesota move beyond admiring the problem of the gaping gaps in educational achievement and attainment that persist in our state along racial and socioeconomic lines? That was one of the questions I had the opportunity to pose last night to more than 100 community members who gathered to watch a preview screening of a new TPT documentary, “Challenging Expectations.” The program offers a compelling overview of the urgent need to put students from groups that have long been underrepresented in higher education — especially students of color and low-income students — on the path to success at technical, community and four-year colleges.

The program describes many of the changes that schools, colleges and community partners need to make to reach that goal, from increasing access to challenging high school classes to providing mentors and support systems for students who face challenges beyond the classroom. Carlos Mariani Rosa — legislator and head of the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership — spoke about the need for systemic responses combined with individual commitment and community leadership. He also suggested that we need many more non-profit organizations like Admission Possible and publicly supported initiatives like the federal TRiO programs.

I agree with Carlos about the need for systemic reforms and supports, but I was most struck by the conversation afterward about another critical part of the formula for academic success: student motivation. Time and again, we heard students who were succeeding against the odds say they had a fire in the belly to make their way to college and a career. Some of those students said that motivation came from a family member, others drew it from a mentor or teacher and still others had no idea where it originated.

As I reflected last night on my years as a K-12 teacher and administrator, I realized that despite the fact that my colleagues and I were deeply committed to student success, no school or district I worked in had a formal strategy to increase and sustain students’ motivation to succeed in school. Instead, we assumed that strong relationships and good teaching would result in the motivation to learn. For many students, those things are enough. But my experience in recent years and the “Challenging Expectations” program reinforce my sense that schools and organizations that work with youth now need to put in place proactive and powerful strategies for motivating students to succeed in school and progress toward higher education and high-skill employment.

And so the question in my mind today is this: what would that look like? How can we do more than hope that students develop the persistence to work through academic and personal challenges to reach their goals? How can we help young people who tweet and text all day develop the willingness to undertake the “boring” work that is required to learn to perform a science experiment, write a great essay or create a great work of art?

What programs and educators are already doing this, what can we learn from them and how do we replicate them across Minnesota? We need to stop admiring the problem of the achievement gap and start solving it at scale for all of our students and in all of our communities.

Comments

[Traci Parmenter Kirtley]

Kent, I used to think about this often when I was teaching high school and also spending a lot of time with my young nephew. How is it, I wonder, that we start with the infinite curiosity and passion for learning that two-year-old Ben displayed in my living room, and end up with the seventeen-year-olds who loathed school and tried to sleep through my class? It seems to me that a system that builds from a human’s natural curiosity and desire for learning, both in an overall curricular and pedagogical approach as well as in each individual classroom or learning environment, and simultaneously focuses hard on learning outcomes, is the best way to create students who are both successful, and engaged. When I was teaching I believed that my main goal was to get my students to become Spanish speakers. This meant that I had to teach them the material I was responsible for in the ten months they were in my classroom; but I also had to build in them a love of learning that would sustain them in a pursuit that had to continue beyond my classroom. I think if more teachers, administrators, and policymakers saw their work that way—and more systems were built to sustain that throughout a six, twelve, or sixteen year learning stream—we would have a far stronger system than we do now.

But I also think there is often a psychological barrier to ‘motivation’, especially in populations traditionally unlikely to go to college. For many of the students we see at Admission Possible, they want to go to college and are doing the things they know to do to pursue it—but in many cases, their belief that they DESERVE a college education, and that they can in fact achieve it, is extremely fragile. They need more than a curricular or pedagogical shift—they need at least one, or even better, many adults around them who will systematically, over time, build in them the confidence that they belong in college. That's what our high school 'coaches' do, with great success. This is a change that could be implemented quickly, if every adult who works with students re-examined their own approach and asked themselves what language, attitudes, or behaviors they use when dealing with students like ours—and then making just one shift that might better support these students as they pursue their education.