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EMPOWER

Chapter 2

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MOTIVATION

Empower Students to Make Their Values the Reason for Doing Schoolwork

When students find a task uninteresting (which, let’s face it, happens fairly often), we sometimes tell them why it’s important. If you do your history homework, then you’ll get a good grade and the knowledge you need for the next unit. If you avoid your work, then you’ll get a bad grade and unhappy parents. If you never do your history homework, then you’ll lack the skills to get into a good college. We frame schoolwork as being a condition for something—an if that has a then.

But doing schoolwork isn’t necessarily a condition for anything good to happen, just as avoiding work doesn’t necessarily lead to anything bad. Some students do the minimum and still get excellent grades, charm their teachers (or at least escape notice), and go on to have brilliant careers. Other students complete every assignment to the best of their ability and still see few successes. When we frame an action—such as doing history homework—as a condition for achieving a specific goal, we feel satisfaction only upon achieving the goal, not from doing the action itself (Villatte et al., 2015). If Juan knows his history teacher will give a quiz tomorrow, he might do his reading tonight in order to get the grade he wants. Being satisfied with his grade doesn’t mean he finds the act of reading history satisfying, and he might not do his reading again until there’s another quiz.

However, if we frame actions not as conditions for achieving a particular outcome but as components of meaningful lives, we can find satisfaction in the actions themselves and feel motivated to keep doing them (Villatte et al., 2015). For Juan, a meaningful life includes connecting with people, understanding their lives, and helping when he can. If he sees how reading about history can increase his understanding of and ability to help others, he might do more of his homework!

Rather than trying to motivate our students by telling them what might happen if they do or don’t complete their assignments, we can help each of them clarify what a meaningful life is and ask, “How does doing this assignment contribute to that kind of life?” This chapter’s activities help students think about how their assignments and interactions at school contribute to the lives they want for themselves.

Grading Your Classes

After defining criteria for what makes school personally meaningful, students grade each of their courses based on these criteria and write about how they can increase their sense of meaning in class. Try this activity near the end of a marking period, when students are thinking about the grades they’re getting.

Materials for Each Student

For this activity, each student will need a pen, notebook paper, and the “What Makes a Class Meaningful?” handout (figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1: “What Makes a Class Meaningful?” handout

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Sample Script

The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.

Let’s think about how schoolwork can be meaningful. Just to get started, we’ll use a little food metaphor. In a few minutes, you’ll see how it relates to making schoolwork meaningful. (Draws a matrix on the board. Labels the columns Yummy and Yucky, labels the rows Healthy and Unhealthy, and asks the students to do the same. See figure 2.2.)

Figure 2.2: Yummy versus healthy and fun versus meaningful.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Yummy and healthy mean different things. For me, Greek salad is yummy and healthy, kale smoothies are yucky and healthy, chocolate mousse is yummy and unhealthy, and cheese puffs are yucky and unhealthy. (Fills in the boxes accordingly.) See if you can fill in your own charts with foods you like and dislike. Our tastes are going to be different. Anyone want to share what they wrote? (Pauses.)

Now that we’ve distinguished between yummy and healthy, we’re going to distinguish between fun and meaningful. (Makes a new matrix. Labels the columns Fun and Painful and labels the rows Meaningful and Pointless.) Draw yourself another matrix like mine.

An activity can be fun and meaningful, painful and meaningful, fun and pointless, or painful and pointless. You’re going to fill in your four boxes with activities, but first, just notice that something can be painful in all kinds of ways. It might be physically painful, but it could also be emotionally painful, like if it’s boring or frustrating or scary or stressful or exhausting or embarrassing. With that in mind, fill in your boxes.

What do you notice this time? Can anyone think of a meaningful pursuit that’s always fun or always painful? Is it easier to classify activities or foods? For me, even though I put swimming with my family as an activity I find fun and meaningful, there are days when going in the water is painful!

Now that we see that fun isn’t the same as meaningful, let’s talk about what makes a class fun. (Calls on students to share and records their responses, such as learning about an interesting topic, playing games, having a funny teacher, being with friends, bringing food, or getting no homework.)

If this is what makes a class fun, what makes a class meaningful? (Calls on students to share and writes their responses on the board.)

It might be hard to express what it is about a class that makes it meaningful, so here’s a list of things students sometimes say. (Distributes the “What Makes a Class Meaningful?” handout [figure 2.1, page 32].) See if you can choose three factors that are most important for a class to be meaningful to you. If the wording doesn’t quite work for you, feel free to change the wording or write your own factors. (Pauses for students to write.)

Now that you’ve come up with your three factors, see if you can recall a time when you had a classroom experience that was meaningful in one or more of the ways you identified. Maybe it was a particular lesson or project, or maybe a unit, or maybe it was the course as a whole. What happened during that experience? What was it like for you? (Students talk or write about their meaningful classroom experiences.)

How did it feel to talk about learning experiences you found meaningful? (Students might share feelings of fondness; they might also share feelings of loss or frustration that they no longer have experiences like these.)

Now let’s move from the past to the present. Please make a list of all the classes you’re currently taking. Beside each one, write what grade you’d give that class based on how meaningful it is, according to the criteria you’ve chosen. If, for example, you said a class is meaningful when it gives you opportunities to learn about topics that matter in the world, develop empathy, and show leadership, you’d give each one a grade based on how well it gives you those opportunities. (Pauses for students to write.)

How was that? What did you notice?

Now pick one or two classes that got disappointing grades. Not necessarily the lowest grades, but ones that disappoint you. Maybe you like the subject or the teacher, but you don’t find the class meaningful in the ways you identified. Or maybe you were more excited about this class at the beginning of the year than you are now. How can you take better advantage of opportunities to make these classes meaningful, or make those opportunities yourself? For example, if you think it’s important to develop relationships and you don’t feel like Spanish class gives you many opportunities to do that, then how can you create ways to develop relationships with your teacher and peers? Maybe you could meet with the teacher outside of class, or maybe you could study harder so you can have conversations with your classmates and teacher in Spanish.

Even though your teachers come to class with lesson plans and assignments, you can decide how you’re going to be in that class. Below the grades you listed, see if you can write two or three specific things you can do to make the classes that got disappointing grades more meaningful. (See figure 2.3.)

Figure 2.3: Example of a class report card.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Follow-Up

After a few days or weeks, you can ask your students to talk about how their ideas for making class meaningful are working out, and whether they need help thinking of more ideas.

If students receive narrative feedback, either in their report cards or on individual assignments, another next step could be for students to look in these narratives for suggestions they could follow to make their classes more meaningful. Instead of obediently following the suggestions, rebelliously ignoring them, or feeling overwhelmed by them all, students can decide which suggestions match their values.

If students participate in parent-teacher conferences, they can present a portfolio of work that represents times when they’ve succeeded and failed to make school meaningful in the ways they identified. The conference can become a brainstorming session: How can the student make school meaningful in the future? How can you, in collaboration with the parents or guardians, support the student’s efforts to make school meaningful?

You can repeat this activity as often as grades come out. Students can revisit their factors for what makes a class meaningful and make adjustments, because what is important to them might change. They can give their classes grades every marking period—just as they get grades in each class—and come up with new ideas for making class meaningful.

Variations

We designed this activity for students who get letter grades; if your students get numeric scores or a rubric, they can evaluate their courses accordingly. The students could also grade assignments or units rather than grading the entire course.

Challenges

Some students won’t know what motivates them. For them, this activity is a chance to play with ideas—just as they’re playing with clothing styles, food choices, musical tastes, career aspirations, and romantic interests. Others might have a sense of what makes learning meaningful, but they won’t be able to find words for it on the list or make up their own. You can acknowledge the limits of language—that the vitality that comes with doing meaningful work is felt. In this activity, getting the phrasing exactly right isn’t the point. The point is to become aware of what makes school meaningful so they notice and seize opportunities to do what matters.

Some students might sense a disconnect between the grades and their experiences. Perhaps the grades don’t “feel right” to them. This can happen for several reasons. Some might have chosen factors that don’t actually capture what’s most important to them. They can rethink their factors.

Others might feel awkward if they like certain teachers but don’t find their classes all that meaningful. You can point out that the grades students get aren’t based on how much their teachers like them but rather on how well the students are doing in areas those teachers deem important. You can also review the difference between liking something and finding it meaningful. They’re not grading how much they like the teacher or even the class; they’re basing the grades on how meaningful the classes are to them, according to their own definitions of meaningful.

Giving a class a good grade might feel distressing to students who don’t feel like the teacher values them. Teachers certainly aren’t immune to bias, and some students might feel invisible or invalidated on the basis of race, gender, gender-nonconforming behavior, physical appearance, first language, mental or physical health conditions, or a variety of other factors. Let’s say Kumar values learning about topics that matter in the world, using his creativity, and belonging to a community. In his history class, he does feel he’s learning about important events, doing projects that allow him to be creative, and sitting with three girls who have become his intellectual companions and friends. However, his history teacher often mistakes his playfulness for disrespect while ignoring similar behaviors in his white classmates, and never calls attention to his strengths. Therefore, even though the class itself provides many opportunities for Kumar to put his values into action, he feels conflicted about giving it a good grade. We hope this activity will empower students to see their classes as a context for enacting their own values, even in the face of unfair treatment.

Finally, many students get stuck during the last part of the activity, when they’re asked to think of ways they can make their classes more meaningful. They’re so used to receiving directions and rules that they might struggle when you ask them to think critically and creatively. To inspire students who are having difficulty, you can ask those who do come up with ways to make their classes meaningful to share their strategies. You can also invite older students or alumni to talk about ways they made school meaningful, and encourage students to ask trusted adults for ideas. Even if some students aren’t ready to try anything new, this activity can begin a conversation.

Focus Stickers

Sometimes students genuinely want to change the way they behave but have trouble carrying out a new behavior because they’re so accustomed to an old one. This sort of thing happens in day-to-day life all the time. Perhaps we truly want to go running after work, but we’re used to flopping down on the couch, and by the time we remember that we’d set the intention to run, it’s too late at night.

People are more likely to make values-consistent changes to their behavior when they direct attention toward them (Fitzpatrick et al., 2016; Verplanken & Holland, 2002). In this activity, students make icons to represent values-consistent actions and use the icons as visual cues to fulfill the actions at times when it’s usually hard. It works well in the middle of the school year, once students have established their routines and a sense of who they are in each of their classes.

Materials for Each Student

For this activity, each student will need a pen, paper, three to six dot stickers, and a black permanent marker.

Sample Script

The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.

Think of a time when a learning experience went really well. It could be a class, an assignment, or an out-of-school learning experience—maybe on a team, in a club, in a religious or after-school class, or even at home. Try to think of something recent, but it’s okay if you have to think back.

What were you doing, physically and mentally, during that experience? For example, if you took a really great cooking class, maybe you were washing sweet potatoes, shredding kale, using the blender to make sauce, and frying tofu. And maybe you were also listening really carefully about how to cut the sweet potatoes properly and how to make the barbecue sauce. Maybe you were imagining how your family would react if you made them the garlicky greens for dinner. And maybe you were asking a lot of questions and talking to different people in the class about what you were doing.

Describe in as much detail as possible what you were doing during that learning experience—not what someone else was doing, not what you weren’t doing, and not what the experience was like. Mental actions, like thinking and wondering, count as doing something. (Students write their descriptions; some might wish to share what they wrote.)

You’ve now described some of the things you did in a particular learning situation. Some of those actions are probably appropriate to that specific situation but wouldn’t be appropriate in learning situations at school. Washing sweet potatoes makes sense in a cooking class, but you obviously wouldn’t be able to wash sweet potatoes in math class. But if you also wrote that you were helping other people, listening really carefully, imagining possibilities, asking a lot of questions, talking to different people—these are all things you could do in math, English, gym, or Spanish—really any class. Go back through your description and underline actions you could do in several of your different classes, or while working on different kinds of school assignments.

Now pick one of the actions you underlined. Find something you think is particularly important, not just in the context of the learning experience you wrote about but in other situations, too. Circle that action. Would anyone like to share what you picked?

And now you’re going to create a very simple icon to represent the behavior you picked. Make it a simple shape—something you can draw pretty quickly and easily with just a few strokes of a pen. Draw a circle around your icon. (Students draw their icons. Some might wish to share them by drawing them on the board and labeling them with the behaviors they represent. See figure 2.4.)

Figure 2.4: Examples of icons.

Now I’m going to give you a black marker and three dot stickers. With the marker, draw your icon on each of your dot stickers. (Draws icons on stickers and shows them to the class as models.)

Put these stickers in places where they’ll be visual reminders for you to do the behaviors they represent. For example, if your behavior is asking questions, maybe you drew a question mark. If you hardly ever ask questions in English class, but you want to, maybe put the sticker on your English notebook.

You might put your stickers on your materials for a particular class, like your history binder, your science text, your music folder, or your calculator. You might put them on materials you bring to all of your classes, like a laptop. Your locker, phone, or homework area could all be helpful places. The best place is wherever you might look when you need a reminder to engage in the behavior. Who would like to share where you’re putting your stickers?

Follow-Up

After a few days or weeks, you can ask if the stickers ever prompted the behaviors they represent. How did it go? How did it feel? Are there other places the students want to put stickers? Are there other behaviors they want to try making icons for (perhaps using a different color dot sticker)? You can keep a supply of dot stickers on hand and occasionally ask students if they want to share stories, make new commitments, or renew old ones.

Variations

You can ask your students to think about how they can incorporate their valued behaviors into processes they learn in your class, such as the writing process, the process of analyzing a primary source document, or the process of doing a lab experiment. Students can share their behavior targets with one another to help hold themselves accountable to their values.

If you don’t have dot stickers, you could use sticky notes or have the students draw their icons directly on their materials in permanent marker.

You can suggest that students hide their icons so they find them in the future. For example, a student who wants to listen more actively could draw her ear icon on random notebook pages. On days when she gets to these pages, she’ll rediscover the icons and remember to listen more attentively during those class periods.

You can also use this activity to help students think about how they want to behave during less structured parts of their day. Instead of asking them to recall a time when they were engaged in learning, ask them to recall an experience when they were their most compassionate, kindest, or most respectful selves. They can list the things they were doing during this experience and make an icon that represents and prompts the behavior. This version puts group values ahead of individual values while letting students choose how they enact those values.

Challenges

Students who dislike drawing might resist making icons, and some might need help thinking of visual representations. Others might complain that their icons aren’t creative enough: “I want to ask questions, but a question mark seems so obvious.” Still others might create icons that don’t connect to the behavior; a student who draws a line to represent asking questions (because asking a question is like crossing the line from curiosity into knowledge, perhaps) might forget the icon’s meaning. Then it won’t prompt the behavior. These kinds of struggles could be great opportunities for your students to help each other, and also to notice that the point isn’t perfection but workability.

We’ve found that this activity works best if you have your students immediately put their stickers into place. Otherwise, the students most in need of reminders will be the ones who lose their stickers.

Some students might choose behaviors that are already easy for them, or that aren’t that important, or that they can most quickly figure out how to represent with an icon. After some time has passed, ask your students to think about whether their focus stickers are reminding them to behave in ways that genuinely matter to them. If not, they can make new stickers that better reflect their values.

For some students, the stickers won’t serve as effective cues. If the sticker isn’t working, you can help that student brainstorm other kinds of reminders that might work better.

How I Want to Be in a Group

Students spend a fair amount of their time in groups, whether they’re assigned a partner for a project, having lunch with their friends in the cafeteria, playing on a team, or just being members of different classes. Any of these group situations can feel threatening. Students might worry about looking stupid or uncool, getting a bad grade because of someone else’s mistake or lack of effort, being excluded, and all sorts of other unwanted outcomes.

When we feel threatened, our behavioral repertoire tends to narrow (Wilson, 2009; Wilson & Murrell, 2004). We fight back, run away, or freeze up—and in the process, we sometimes subvert our values. Think of a student who wants to treat others compassionately but rewrites his partner’s half of their essay because he’s afraid it will bring their grade down. Or a student who wants to express herself creatively but stays silent during a brainstorm session because she’s sure her peers will laugh at her ideas. Or students who want to treat themselves kindly but skip lunch for fear of getting bullied in the cafeteria. This activity’s aim is not to get students to behave a certain way, but rather to help them take stock of their options so they can act more flexibly in the face of a perceived threat.

This activity works best when groups are forming: on the first day of a group project or when a class, team, club, or ensemble first comes together. You can repeat it every time a group forms.

Materials for Each Student

For this activity, each student will need a pen, writing paper, “Being in a Group” handout (figure 2.5), and the “Examples of Values” handout (page 214).

Figure 2.5: “Being in a Group” handout.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Sample Script

The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.

Think about some of the groups you’ve worked with. It could be a class, a sports team, an ensemble for a performance, a religious group, or maybe something less formal like a team for a class project or even a group of friends. When all goes well, what can be really great about working in a group? (Students suggest benefits of group work, such as hearing more perspectives on problems, creating solutions together, making new friends, sharing burdensome work, learning from each other, and playing to each person’s strengths.)

We’ve probably all experienced some of the things that don’t go so well in groups. What can be really horrible about working in a group? (Students suggest drawbacks such as arguing, being unable to compromise, distracting each other, having different standards for the final product, having a boring task, getting left out, getting bossed around, and having some people not contribute enough.)

What can we do when we’re in our groups to maximize the benefits and minimize the drawbacks? Let’s try to give dos instead of don’ts so that we know what to do rather than what not to do. (Students suggest behaviors such as taking turns speaking and listening to all perspectives before making a decision. If students suggest don’ts, like don’t micromanage, ask what the do is: “If you’re not micromanaging, what are you doing?”)

Sometimes people don’t like working in groups because of these drawbacks that are outside their control. So today I’m going to ask you to think about what is in your control. (Distributes the “Being in a Group” handout [figure 2.5].)

When you think about how you want to behave in your group, what words come to mind? How do you want to interact with your group members? How do you want to do the work? How do you want to solve problems? Since we’re talking about how we’re behaving, we need adverbs. For example, if it’s important to me to be real, I might write genuinely. If I want to act kindly toward the people in my group, I’ll write kindly on my chart. What qualities of action are important for you? Write them in your chart. (Students write their adverbs. For ideas, they can look at the “Examples of Values” handout [page 214].)

Notice that these qualities of action are available to you all the time. I have the potential to act kindly in class, at the lunch table, at home with my family, and at the supermarket when I’m talking to the checkout clerk. Even when I’m alone I can act kindly toward myself. Acting kindly is an important value for me, and I can look for ways to act kindly wherever I am. Notice that whatever adverbs you wrote down are available as qualities of your actions when you’re with your family, when you’re with your friends, and even right now. And they’ll also be available to you when you’re working in your group.

Look over the list of behaviors we made a few minutes ago. Choose two that are an important part of living according to the values you wrote down—but that might be sort of challenging for you to do. Maybe it’s something you haven’t done and you’re curious to try it. Or maybe it’s something you have done, but not as much or as often as you’d like. Or maybe it’s something you tried and didn’t do so well, but you’re willing to give it another shot. See if you can find two behaviors that seem important but that are hard for you, and write them down in your chart.

Now think about the behaviors you need your group members to exhibit in order for you to work effectively. Maybe these are some of the same behaviors you chose for yourself, or maybe they come easily to you but not to everyone. Maybe they’re related to some of the ways groups haven’t gone so well for you in the past. Pick two behaviors that seem most important for your group members to do for you, and write them in your chart.

I’m about to put you into your groups. You’ll share the behaviors you need your group members to do, and you’ll listen to what your group members say they need from you. Then you’ll pick two of the behaviors they need from you, and write them at the bottom of your own chart. Put your chart with the rest of your materials for this group project so you can refer back to it.

Follow-Up

The behaviors that students choose for themselves, along with the behaviors their group members choose for them, could become a rubric for students to use throughout the project. Each day, they could rate their own behaviors and then make a plan for the next day. What can they do more, the same, and less?

At the end of the project, students can journal about their experiences: How did it go in your group? What are some things your partner does well, as a student and as a group member? What are some behaviors you want to work on the next time you’re in a group?

If you collect the behavior statements, you can redistribute them later in the year and see if students are still working on these behaviors. If you give another group assignment, you can invite students to decide whether to recommit to the behaviors they identified last time, try bigger or smaller versions of these behaviors, or explore entirely new behaviors. You could even use the behavior statements to make groups (for example, by pairing a student who wants to listen more thoroughly with a partner who wants to participate more actively).

Variations

You could ask the students to reflect more deeply by having them write stories about specific experiences they’ve had in groups. What was the situation? How did they feel? How did they respond? How did that way of responding work out for them? You can offer to collect these stories so students who want to share them with you can.

To help your students be authentic and vulnerable, you can tell a story about a time when you were in a group—maybe an academic department, grade-level team, task force, or committee—and didn’t act in accordance with your values. If students see that you’re willing to be vulnerable by sharing times when you’ve strayed from your values, they might open up, too. If nothing else, they’ve learned that values-consistent action is a lifelong but worthwhile struggle.

If your school has a homeroom or an advisory period, your students can use that forum to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of group work, clarify their values, and identify important but challenging behaviors they want from themselves and need from others. This way, a group project in any class requires only that students share their behavioral commitments and needs and then make their rubrics. This approach not only saves time in the academic class but also helps students see how they can choose values-consistent behaviors across contexts.