Advice From Strong & Subjects Matter

Many who read Strong’s Chapter 6 can quickly identify dull “busy work” as the reason for students’ lack of motivation. The picture Vader paints in the opening section clearly set the aforementioned scene (94-95). However, there is one sentence that I think was overshadowed by the overall portrait. On the first page Vader asserts that “By making students fearful of errors, both real and imagined, we reduce motivation” (94). Until recently I would do any school work despite the drudgery, but only so long as I received a good grade. Unlike the students primarily discussed by Strong, my lack of motivation stemmed form a fear of failure. Thinking back this attitude developed under the testing craze started under Bush. The school environment at the time sent messages to students that one grade was what mattered and not the overall picture. I learned to treat every test like this, which created a high anxiety to perform well. So I made sure to pick classes that I could get A’s in rather than be challenged. Clearly, I had the wrong attitude for any type of learning to occur. I am finding similar issues in today’s school too. For instance during a recent volunteer session that coached students on the how to pass Classical; entrance exam, I had to use half the session time to remind the eighth graders that a score does not define them. I had to do this at the start of every due to the negative vibes they were getting outside my class time with them. Their anxiety came on years before mine did, which is frightening given the negative results that can follow (below is a link to handle perfectionist).   

Luckily, the Strong reading displays important solutions to the problem of both kinds of “reduced motivation.”  To make work less dull a teacher can use assignments that encouraging creativity, like CRAFT. Strong gives a good argument for why this woks (97). However, on top of his reasons I also think CRAFT is particularly good for high school students because it allows them to pretend to be someone else. During adolescence, teenagers are trying to figure out who they are. Being in someone else’s shoes is a good way to for them to explore values and ideas that they can incorporate into their identity, which as we know anything that relates to a student’s life can raise to increased motivation. Furthermore, who you have the students writing about will make a huge difference. I never thought of the students acting as lawyers before the Supreme Court, but this could be an exciting task given how much is mentioned about the Courts as of late (100). Furthermore, it opens the students to a possible career choice, which some will be curious about as they are thinking of life after high school. Despite all the benefits of CRAFT, I never saw this used in my classes before or during any of my recent observations. I just have to wonder, why don’t teachers use this more?

CRAFT alone can’t increase motivation for failure avoidant student, but the teacher’s attitude toward grading can. Sarah, the math teacher who had the creative rubric, showed grading can be done in a manner that allows for her class to have a second change (101). Doing this puts the learning process first and the grades second because you aren’t putting so much pressure on one grade. I am not sure if I would suggest that everything handed in be allowed to a second chance because a teacher might not be able to grade that quickly. Plus, in the “real world” students will not always be given second chances. However for some of the bigger writing assignments that are new, I think it is something that should be used to ease student’s concerns. A teacher could maybe even work something into their testing system that could help a student’s overcome high text anxiety.  

The content of my reflection keeps straying back to high stakes testing and anxiety, but it’s an issue that will clearly affect all of us as new teachers. Fortunately, Strong isn’t the only author with ideas to help the student succeed. Previously, Subject Matters showed that there are different reading strategies that need to be taught in order for students to become better learners so that they could once more like learning (24-30). Daniels and Zemelman, also displayed that another way to make classwork more interesting was to substitute the reading for genres like nonfiction book rather than relying on the text book all the time (53). Chapter 3 went into great depth as to why teachers should supplement the text book (i.e. inaccuracies, difficulty level, poor design, etc.) (40-44). However, what I appreciated most from Subjects Matters was the section in Chapter 6 that explained how to use the text book so as to increase the student’s comprehension level. Let’s face it, we will all be using textbooks so we are going to need to know what to do with them. While all the activities seem useful, my favorite is the first one in which the teacher actually educates the pupils about the text book by having them explore the book and writing their findings in a graphic organizer (150-151). It is so simple, but could make a great difference in how the class paces their reading, organizes themselves for the test, and deciphers the text. Plus this fed back could even help me assign readings or classwork to the students now that I understand their frame of reference.

The advice from Subjects Matters will clearly have a large impact in my teaching as will Strong’s advice. I won’t say one is better than the other because the authors are both focused on different aspects of the learning (i.e. resources vs. assignments). What matter though, is that both resources and assignments need to be used so as to increase the student’s success, which is obviously the focus of each author and the reason I will heed aspects of their feedback.  

Link

1. http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/shore/shore008.shtml