Student Motivation as a Parent and as a Teacher

Student Motivation as a Parent and as a Teacher

By Janelle Stear, June 11, 2018

As a parent, which is best for my child: public school or charter school? 

I have two children who just finished grades second and fifth in a local public school. I also have just finished teaching in a high school public school, the same district. 

With my own children, I had started reading with them at an early age. They saw me go through my Master's Program and how dedicated I was at being successful myself. 

My children are at the top of their classes. My fifth grade daughter recently scored above average on her Reading, Writing, and Science ISATs. She reads at a high school level. She often helps her peers for assignments because she seems to understand the directions quicker. Her teacher told her on her report card to "go and conquer the world." She not only does well on her academics, but my daughter also has many ideas for writing stories, and for making products to improve our lives. One idea she has is to invent a system for capturing air to combine with gasoline to protect the air and avoid harmful emissions to the earth. 

My other daughter in second grade reads at a fifth grade level, and outperformed her peers in the Idaho Reading Indicator test. She sews her own pouches to store her things; she invented her own mini clothes rack out of paper towel holders and pieces of cardboard. She plans on reviewing products for girls and posting her findings on YouTube this summer. This daughter is a lot like a little scientist who takes her ideas and actually turns them into finished products. 

Yes as a parent, I am entitled to brag about how well my children are doing at such an early age. As a teacher, I can say furthermore that I wish more of my high school students still were more motivated to succeed. 

In one of my sophomore classes this past year, I had a class of twenty-eight students. About eight of them would turn in every assignment, would ask questions for clarifications on directions, would ask to redo assignments if they received a low grade. The rest of the students in this one class period, I do not have a better word for them except unmotivated. These other students were always respectful to me as their teacher. Some of them would throw pencils or paper airplanes when I was not looking. One of them even put an actual cold, hot dog on the clip on my front board when I was not looking (and did not notice until the next period). A handful of these students would banter across the room because no matter where I put them they still had to talk to each other. They still had to joke and goof off together. Yes these students were on the immature side for being in 10th grade. Now as far as their work went, it was all I could do to get them to start an assignment let alone turn something in. I would occasionally hear them say they did not care about their grade, or it did not matter to them for their future, or they would just do it in summer school because it is easier. I cannot tell you how I would cringe every time I heard these excuses. 

I would even add in different types of activities for them to try to be more motivated, such as group discussions, or group research presentations. These unmotivated students seemed to enjoy the discussions (they actually participated and talked about the content), and they enjoyed working with groups for research. However, the quality of their research presentations was severely lacking as any time they had to write and cite evidence, they just copied word for word from sources instead of putting it into their own words. I had a few students who would actually turn in essays, but I would quickly see that they had directly copied from an online source. I would have to give them a zero for the assignment anyway because they plagiarized. 

I honestly felt sorry for the eight students in the class who did do their work. These other students were often disruptive, even with my management intervention. I will admit it was only my third year teaching so I was still growing in management. Yet, despite that fact, I felt like I could handle the behaviors about half of the time. I know I was not consistent enough with some students just because I grew tired of repeating myself and moving them around in the room away from their friends. I also detested having to refer them to the administration for behavior infractions so I did not do that as often as I should have done. 

Now one new trick I tried this year is an idea that I learned in the Academic Coach, Fred Jones's book, Positive Classroom Discipline. Jones gave "The Teacher Student Game" as a positive strategy to motivate students. I tried that this year with both my freshmen and sophomore students. The first quarter my students really bought into it. By third quarter, especially with this one sophomore class, there was a lack of interest so even I forgot about it at times. However, by fourth quarter when their final chance to pass my class with at least a D was drawing near, the game became relevant again. 

Here is how the "Teacher Student Game" works from Jones' book and from my own adaption: 

Teacher vs. Student Rules

• Students get a point when Mrs. Stear makes a mistake, i.e., she is not ready, she calls someone the wrong name, or she has an error on the slides.

• Mrs. Stear gets a point when students are not on task, not transitioning quickly, or not being respectful.

• When students get 10 points, they earn a homework pass (not for writing assignments).

• When Mrs. Stear gets 10 points, she takes a point away from the students.

When students as a class earned the ten points, then I would give out little slips of paper that said Stear Homework Pass. Students would write the assignment, their name, and date to us in place of a daily work assignment, not a writing assessment.
I have found countless testimonials online from other teachers of different grade levels who have used this strategy for classroom management and also had success. Sasha Long, on her blog, The Autism Helper, further explains about the game: "When the kids get a point for following the rules, make sure to comment on what the person is doing that has earned the point. This will help further reinforce this desired behavior... Get Into it! If you aren't - they won't be!... it sounds too simple...This game is the bomb and has this instant and powerful effect that is nothing short of inexplicable magic."

I concur with Long and with Jones that the more you get into such a system the more students will buy into it. As I said earlier with the sophomore class that was struggling due to a lack in motivation, at the end of the year, some of them did actually care about passing. They turned in the last set of writing assignments, plus their collection of homework passes from the Teacher versus Student game. At the beginning of fourth quarter I had twenty-three of twenty-eight Fs in that one class period. At the very end, I only had thirteen Fs. I see this as an accomplishment for those ten students who suddenly cared. Now ten less students from my English 10 class are going to summer or night school to make up the credit. 

Now as a parent these ten Sophomore students who suddenly ended the semester passing their English class, I would be so thrilled that my student finally figured out some motivation to pass. That means as a parent I will not have to drive or arrange bussing for my student to get to summer school. 

All in all, as I reflect on my children's success and my students' successes, I know that I did what I could do to help them all. I am always willing to find tricks and strategies to motivate students. My point is sometimes as teachers we are going to have students that we have to work extra hard at to motivate them. That is part of teaching. What I appreciate is that I have an endless supply of strategies and ideas from other teachers, like Jones and Long, with which to draw from to aid in my classroom-learning environment.