Day 13: Somewhat Discouraged
Maybe it's just the rain outside, or a minor sense of guilt about missing blogging yesterday, but I awoke a bit discouraged today.
I think the main factor in this feeling was listening in on the 12th grade advisory check-in yesterday and hearing how many kids said they were having trouble being "motivated" to do school work. Like many other educators, I've been particularly concerned about the students with less support at home, who struggle with school work even in normal times, or tend to be impacted by anxiety or other needs for daily support in school. These seniors who expressed their struggles with schoolwork were all pretty strong students in normal times, which makes me worry even more about students with more challenges.
Admittedly, these are seniors and it is close to spring, so maybe this is a bit of senioritis. And they are teenagers who somehow have this uncanny ability to sleep through a lot of daylight hours (more than a few had just awoken for this 1 pm meeting). And of course, this whole being stuck at home during a worldwide epidemic is a new experience and unsettling in all sorts of ways. So maybe I should be more realistic about the potential for students to be productive.
I am curious about the word "motivation" (or lack thereof) that was used by each of these kids. While strong internal motivation could drive a student to do all the steps to completing work, it seems to me that blaming motivation is a passive, somewhat removed factor that an individual can just accept as something that is either there or not and not something we control or can influence.
It was difficult in a group meeting to explore what exactly students meant, but I wondered if they were unmotivated in a "I don't even get out of bed" or "I haven't even tried to work" kind of way (which I think is more the case) or a "I sit down to do an hour of science and just stare at the screen the whole time." The latter seems truly related to motivation and is pretty understandable (but hopefully still solvable); the former seems at least partly a problem with organization and structure and overcoming inertia to do all the little steps to approaching schoolwork.
At the simplest level, I think most kids need dedicated time to try to work. Maybe it can be a multi-hour chunk for school each day (like 9-12 for morning people or 1-4 for later risers). I think maybe better for most kids is having more manageable chunks of 45 minutes or an hour for one subject, a scheduled break, then another hour for another subject, etc. Without some kind of schedule, I can't imagine many kids being able to focus on schoolwork amongst anything else they might be doing and toggling between work and non-work.
I'm not sure how we get kids to make these kind of schedules. So much of this depends on parents (or self-motivated kids) but that too depends on malleable teens who actually follow the advice of adults (and this isn't exactly the profile of at least our group of kids at Compass:).
Even with this kind of schedule, there are still a bunch of other steps to getting organized for completing work (such as getting materials ready, checking into google classroom, following directions in the assignment, etc.). Yes this takes motivation, but better structures and organization could lower the bar considerably to getting started with work, and once started, I think kids will find it more possible to make some progress.
How we get our kids to build these structures is a trick. How this is going to work for bigger schools with less strong connections between students and teachers is beyond me. There is always this super naive belief among non-educators that all kids are focused, motivated, organized, well prepared learners for whom we just need to assign work and they'll follow through on expectations (except, of course, for the 10 or 20% who they seem to easily accept as failing).
But so many kids don't have these kind of ideal conditions. As I've tried to tell legislators, "normal is not normal--too many kids have unique learning needs that just don't comport with this ideal of lapping up whatever schools throw at them. And this is likely to be even more problematic in this remote learning world. Sure, some kids will be able to get organized and work on their own, but many won't. I fear we're in this naive phase of developing remote learning assignments thinking kids will just do whatever is asked of them. It's nice to be hopeful, but, I fear, a lot of schools will find too many students will lack the "motivation," or whatever explains the wherewithal, to be successful in this remote environment.
If you are reading this and want to be alerted to new posts via email, please email me at rick@compass-school.org and I will add you to an email alert system. I think you can also subscribe to this blog if you wanted. Thanks.
Be patient and kind.
I think the main factor in this feeling was listening in on the 12th grade advisory check-in yesterday and hearing how many kids said they were having trouble being "motivated" to do school work. Like many other educators, I've been particularly concerned about the students with less support at home, who struggle with school work even in normal times, or tend to be impacted by anxiety or other needs for daily support in school. These seniors who expressed their struggles with schoolwork were all pretty strong students in normal times, which makes me worry even more about students with more challenges.
Admittedly, these are seniors and it is close to spring, so maybe this is a bit of senioritis. And they are teenagers who somehow have this uncanny ability to sleep through a lot of daylight hours (more than a few had just awoken for this 1 pm meeting). And of course, this whole being stuck at home during a worldwide epidemic is a new experience and unsettling in all sorts of ways. So maybe I should be more realistic about the potential for students to be productive.
I am curious about the word "motivation" (or lack thereof) that was used by each of these kids. While strong internal motivation could drive a student to do all the steps to completing work, it seems to me that blaming motivation is a passive, somewhat removed factor that an individual can just accept as something that is either there or not and not something we control or can influence.
It was difficult in a group meeting to explore what exactly students meant, but I wondered if they were unmotivated in a "I don't even get out of bed" or "I haven't even tried to work" kind of way (which I think is more the case) or a "I sit down to do an hour of science and just stare at the screen the whole time." The latter seems truly related to motivation and is pretty understandable (but hopefully still solvable); the former seems at least partly a problem with organization and structure and overcoming inertia to do all the little steps to approaching schoolwork.
At the simplest level, I think most kids need dedicated time to try to work. Maybe it can be a multi-hour chunk for school each day (like 9-12 for morning people or 1-4 for later risers). I think maybe better for most kids is having more manageable chunks of 45 minutes or an hour for one subject, a scheduled break, then another hour for another subject, etc. Without some kind of schedule, I can't imagine many kids being able to focus on schoolwork amongst anything else they might be doing and toggling between work and non-work.
I'm not sure how we get kids to make these kind of schedules. So much of this depends on parents (or self-motivated kids) but that too depends on malleable teens who actually follow the advice of adults (and this isn't exactly the profile of at least our group of kids at Compass:).
Even with this kind of schedule, there are still a bunch of other steps to getting organized for completing work (such as getting materials ready, checking into google classroom, following directions in the assignment, etc.). Yes this takes motivation, but better structures and organization could lower the bar considerably to getting started with work, and once started, I think kids will find it more possible to make some progress.
How we get our kids to build these structures is a trick. How this is going to work for bigger schools with less strong connections between students and teachers is beyond me. There is always this super naive belief among non-educators that all kids are focused, motivated, organized, well prepared learners for whom we just need to assign work and they'll follow through on expectations (except, of course, for the 10 or 20% who they seem to easily accept as failing).
But so many kids don't have these kind of ideal conditions. As I've tried to tell legislators, "normal is not normal--too many kids have unique learning needs that just don't comport with this ideal of lapping up whatever schools throw at them. And this is likely to be even more problematic in this remote learning world. Sure, some kids will be able to get organized and work on their own, but many won't. I fear we're in this naive phase of developing remote learning assignments thinking kids will just do whatever is asked of them. It's nice to be hopeful, but, I fear, a lot of schools will find too many students will lack the "motivation," or whatever explains the wherewithal, to be successful in this remote environment.
If you are reading this and want to be alerted to new posts via email, please email me at rick@compass-school.org and I will add you to an email alert system. I think you can also subscribe to this blog if you wanted. Thanks.
Be patient and kind.
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