The Learning Environment & Motivation

 In our Lesson Planning Workshops we discuss questioning a great deal.  For the most part, I taught social studies and math during my years as a teacher.  However, my love was social studies; I had so much fun teaching American History and World History to fifth and sixth grade students.

I used what I called a modified lecture format for teaching social studies.  The first part of the class was really a lecture and discussion time.  I would start by identifying the specific topic we would be discussing, like the Boston Tea Party for example.  The next few minutes were used to give the historical facts pertaining to the event.  Then I would embellish the facts with a combination of little known historical facts, personal experiences, stories that I may have heard that were relevant and hopefully a joke or two.  If I did my job well, the students would hang on every word.  In those days, I considered myself more of a performer than a teacher.  During the embellishment segment, I would encourage the students to become active participants by having them share similar information that they knew, a story or even a joke.  You would be surprised at the number of students that would be able to tell a relevant story that grandpa had told them.  The last few minutes of the class would be a question and answer segment where we would review the historical facts of the event.

I have always considered myself fortunate in that the students loved to be in my class.  I guess it was because I was different from most of the “old maid” type teachers that dominated the school at that time.  Most of those teachers had a frown on their face 90% of the time.  I did everything in my power to make my classes fun, interesting and informative.  However, I was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

There was a parent who shared with me a concern that her son had with my teaching.  The student was an above average achiever and very well behaved.  However, he had one problem in my class that his mother explained.  She said that I used a lot of words that her son did not know the meaning of, and that bothered him.  I told her that I would try to solve the problem.

The next day, I told the class that there was a mother at parent-teacher conferences the night before that had told me I used words that some of them did not know.  I asked the class to raise their hands if they thought that was true.  To my amazement, most of the class raised their hands.  So, I made a deal with them.  I told them I wanted to solve that problem and that I would try my best to quit using more difficult words, or give them a meaning for the words.  Our deal was this, every time I used a word that someone did not know the meaning of, they would raise their hand.  I would stop and either use a different word or give them the meaning of the word.  Again, I was amazed at the number of times the students raised their hands.  It took me several weeks to get accustom to using a more grade appropriate vocabulary.

Motivating students is a key element of the learning environment.  Several years ago I attended a week-long workshop in teaching and learning.  During one of the sessions, the discussion revolved around how to motivate students.  Several of the teachers lamented to the instructor that the students were just not motivated.  They also gave a whole list of misbehaviors that these “un-motivated” students participated in.  I guess I’ll never forget the response of the instructor.  He said, “Oh, these students are motivated.  They are just not motivated to do what you want them to.”  I have often reflected back on that statement and how true it is.  We are all motivated to do something.  The problem exists when we are not motivated to do what we should do.  Students are no different.

Even though I did not think about motivation as a key element of the learning environment, and even though I did not purposefully plan to motivate the students, I did spend quite a bit of time and effort devoted to that aspect of my teaching.  Another way of looking at this is to say that the students must be actively engaged in the learning process.  That active engagement is achieved through a number of motivational techniques that the teacher uses.

Back in the early 1990’s I was serving the district as assistant superintendent.  As part of my job duties, I also served as the technology coordinator.   My first task was to develop a technology plan for the district.  I put together a team of people that was representative of all grade levels as well as parents and business people.  For the next three months we worked on putting together our technology plan.  It was a great experience.  Our final plan had a two million dollar price tag attached to it.  Our committee never really thought we would be able to implement the plan because we are a poor school district.  But, by the end of three years we had implemented the vast majority of the plan thanks to a very active grant writing program.

An outgrowth of the technology plan was the implementation of the learning center approach to instruction in our kindergarten through sixth grade program.  Each elementary classroom had five student computers and one teacher workstation.  They were all networked and tied into a central file server.  The student computers served as one of the learning centers in the classroom.

We saw immediate results when we implemented the learning centers.  I could really tell a whole host of stories about how the students changed in relation to the new approach to learning.  But perhaps the following is most indicative of the changes we saw in the students.  One of our second grade classes had a little boy that had been what I would call a reluctant learner.  He had poor attendance and his parents gave him little or no support.  It was a real chore getting him to learn anything.  After we had implemented the learning center approach he literally became a different person.  He loved coming to school.  One cold and snowy winter morning, this little boy came into the school about fifteen minutes late.  He had missed the bus.  The teacher asked why he was late.  He told her that his mother had over slept and he missed the bus, so he walked to school.  This little second grader would have missed school for any reason just a few months before.  Now, he was walking to school in bad weather.  The teacher asked him why.  He said, “Because I love coming to school now.”

What is the right formula for creating the kind of learning environment that will cause students to learn?  If we could create an elixir that would cause students to learn, we would become millionaires.  That formula would be guarded as a great secret.  However, I believe that the formula is right under our noses.  The formula is simply this – a teacher who cares for his/her students and wants to help them learn. I’ve often said, “I can put a million dollars worth of high tech equipment in a classroom with a poor teacher and it will be useless.  But I can put a great teacher in a classroom with a blackboard and a piece of chalk and great things will happen.”  I honestly believe that to be true.