It’s not enough to show them Oz, you have to build a yellow brick road too:

An abridged version of my Master's class final on the most important aspect of a classroom:

In just nine hectic months at the helms of title one public school classrooms I have discovered that the vocation of teaching entails far more than I imagined. Teachers are story tellers daily. We have been parents, students, and supervisors. We have been camp counselors, musicians, coaches, nurses, librarians, older brothers, co-conspirators, parents, advertisers, and police officers. We have alternatively had open ears and open mouths. We have been shoulders to cry on and strong minds to push against. We have been scientists, hygienists, beauticians, musical experts, and fashion advisers. We have been detectives, plea bargainers, sergeants, admirals, and motivational speakers. We have been judge, jury, attorney, and detention-cutioner. We have been beacons of truth and honesty; we have been liars. We have had great days as heroes and frustrating days as villains. We have been clung to and moments later spurned. We have been sparingly brilliant, occasionally awful, and all too often mediocre. We have taxed all of our qualifications and life experiences to be psychologists, friends, enemies, dictators, and when the opportunity is just right we squeeze in as much teaching as test prep will allow.

This host of hats we wear is not by accident. And it is not an unnecessary burden of our job. It is our job. Our job is to teach students; it is not to program computers. It is not to present information to young people. It is to teach them. It is not the mindless dispensation of curriculum; it is guiding them to open their minds and prepare them for the future. Our job is not just to ready them for the TAKS test in our grade, not just to prepare them for the next grade level, we are to teach them the skills and knowledge that they need to succeed in the classroom AT LEAST through high school. Those same skills: academic, social, and otherwise are the same skills that they will need to succeed in life as employees, citizens, and thinkers. So, what is the single most important step for this apparently simple task of raising productive citizens and enlightened people? Is it backwards planning? A sound knowledge of the curriculum? Great classroom gimmicks? Performance Pay? Amazing Test Taking Strategies?

None of the Above.

The single most important thing a teacher must do, and the first step a successful teacher must take is to motivate and invest their students. While this seems common sense enough, one only needs to spend 10 minutes in a teacher’s lounge in a non-college-prep-suburban-private school (do these exist in real life?) to hear that this idea is not one that has been internalized or embraced by the teaching community as a whole. We view motivation and investment as a burden. Exasperated teachers implore “Why won’t they turn in their homework?”, “Why don’t they listen?”, “Why are they skipping and dropping out?”, “Why don’t they care?!?!?!?”

This string of questions often ends with something along the line of “When I was in school we did not have to deal with the disrespect like this. We learned what we were told to because we were told to. I am presenting the information to them, it is not my job to make them learn it. I cannot make them care. They should care.” These teachers could not be more correct in their final sentiment- the kids should care. And they will if they are taught to. Just like everything else, children need to be taught how to care. If a student comes to your middle school classroom having never been taught to tie their shoes, I would hope you would teach that even though it is not technically in your job description. They need to have tied shoes to be kept safe. Just like that, they need to be invested in school to be kept safe and off the streets. So, that is where our teaching must begin. Proper student investment is the basis of not only student success academically, but also behaviorally; investment is the linchpin of classroom management.

The first thing teachers need to understand is that too often the severity of issues in students who are not invested, disengaged, uninterested, and apathetic about learning is far worse than we think. This comes in contrast to the easy, quick-fix scenarios teachers learn about in classroom management, learning theories, and instructional strategies seminars. These problems can be very very deep seeded.

So if “I don’t care” is the heart of the problem, and if teachers are the ones responsible for solving the problem, what is the solution? It is amazing how far a little empathy will go.
Teachers are trained to be firm in the beginning. Teachers are taught to counter the students’ “I don’t cares” with the firm “You NEED to care!” Though teachers, no doubt, need to be controlling and consistent, it would seem that a strict approach is not always the best way to motivate the unmotivated. As Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Teacher Education at Gonzaga University writes, when we counter apathetic students with control we are sending the implied message that states, “Control over collaboration and punishment over choice.” Collaboration is taken away when the teacher fails to sit down with the student to hear his concerns and, instead, gives the student another directive. This directive is precisely what takes away a choice. Is it possible that the thing the student “doesn’t care about” is not education at whole, but the specific assignment or activity he is being asked to perform?

Three simple solutions which will not only help student motivation but increase class management are:

Teachers need to be invested just as much as students.
Teachers need to take the time to LISTEN to the needs of the student.
Be personally invested but don’t take things personally!

If we expect students to be invested, we must also be invested. Teachers should take the time to get to know their students. Make it a point to learn the student’s learning abilities. Find out if the student learns best in cooperative groups. Figure out of the student should be moved from the back of the classroom to the front. Get to know what goes on at home. If the student is too hungry because they don’t get to eat breakfast, their concentration will be on food and not learning. The very concrete needs of survival need to be taken care of if we want to invest young minds in a totally conceptual “future” that may or may not exist. If you disagree, try to hold your breathe for 60 seconds and then find the number of prime roots 256 has before you take a breathe.

An effective educator will be on the look out and even actively investigating to see what lies at the heart of the student’s lack of desire in the classroom. If a teacher has fully explored or eliminated one item from the list they should move to the next. This IS a time consuming process, but every single item on this list could be the difference between a teacher helping mold the next Madam Curie or middle school drop out.

Lastly, Don’t take student antagonism personally. It’s easy for educators to become emotionally and personally invested; in fact, any teacher who does not become emotionally invested probably should switch career fields (Because after all, those that can’t teach- do). However, kids will be kids. Regardless of whether or not a teacher has written the greatest lesson plan of all time on rhyme scheme, there will always be students who seem to miss the whole thing because they are thinking about play XBOX or thinking about the upcoming birthday party. When students lack motivation, teachers hinder their ability to invest the students if they become offended by the student’s apathy. From our experience, even us, the world’s greatest first year teachers, have off days and moments. We don’t want our students taking that personally. Why should we act angry towards them when they have off moments?

When dealing with student apathy, understand that student apathy is temporary and often fluctuates depending on the day, separate the student’s lack of motivation from the teacher’s ego. Reflect on the issue and do not necessarily address the student in haste, especially if upset, build trust with the student so that he/she feels OK in telling the teacher he/she is not interested-- if the teacher lashes out against the student for not liking a particular assignment or activity, the student is likely to build a wall of separation between him/her and the teacher, thus perpetuating the student’s disengagement—and be positive!

Student Motivation is a multifaceted and complex problem to overcome. Many students need to be taught how their present affects their future. Some students must even be taught that they are valuable. And all students (even the ones in the suburbs and prep schools working towards college) must be taught that what we are giving out is valuable to them. This is motivation and investment. It must begin with the teacher being invested in themselves, their material, and their students. It must be carried with an open heart and the understanding that it IS hard work. And it ends with graduations, higher degrees, and a whole host of life long learners leaving our classrooms who will save this world and finally build the future that dreamers, teachers, and idealists have been striving towards for millennia.