Our Students Don't Have to be Like Malala

Malala Yousafzai is an inspiration, no doubt. Her struggle to get an education in the face of terror is worthy of every accolade she has received, including the Nobel Prize. She is an amazing human being, and Huffington Post columnist Vicki Cobb says that her story could be a great motivational tool for students in our country. From HuffPo:

How can we motivate students to fight for their own interests in acquiring an education? How can we inspire them to do the hard work needed? Maybe they need to hear Malala speak. Please do your part to share her message with the children in your life.

This might work for some students, but it won't work for most. Stories of amazing people doing amazing things don't necessarily inspire regular people to do regular things. Instead, it can make us feel ashamed for not wanting to do what we know we should.
In reality, it's normal to want to shirk our regular tasks. It too is natural for students to not want to go to school sometimes. It's okay for them to sometimes feel bored while at school. Frustrated too. I bet even Malala feels bored and frustrated occasionally, and these, too, are obstacles she has to overcome every day.
Talking about these everyday obstacles, and not just the extraordinary ones, will help students connect with Malala. Not every student has to take on the Taliban in order to get an education, but every student, including Malala, has to go to class, work hard and study. That's a struggle we all share.

Being in School vs Belonging in School

An article on Quartz yesterday discusses the underlying issues that prevent poorer students from succeeding and it touches on the idea of belonging. Even great schools can have a hard time educating students from underserved backgrounds if they can't convince the students that they belong there. All of our students need great educational opportunities, but they need more than that. They also need an appreciation for knowledge and the confidence that they belong. We can't just open doors for students; we need to invite them in. Here's the article:

America doesn't have an education problem, it has a class problem (Quartz).

It's All About Autonomy

The QKED Mind/Shift blog has a great summary of the current intrinsic/extrinsic motivator debate, and how many educators are finding success when they give their students autonomy. Here is a clip:

The same subtle interplay between motivation and rewards is also at work when it comes to education and learning, say Schwartz and Wrzesniewski. Rewarding students for getting their schoolwork done with prizes, snacks and even grades, as most schools do, can have the unintended effect of dismantling a child’s drive to learn for its own sake. The intrinsic rewards that come from exploring interests in depth, and mastering difficult concepts and problems, can be smothered by a reward system that focuses on grades, say, rather than understanding. It also signals what’s important to the teachers. “When you dangle Burger King in front of kids’ noses, you are telling them what kind of consequence matters, and what motive to pay attention to,” Schwartz says. “And education will suffer.”

What is interesting about this is the idea that extrinsic rewards take away the autonomy of our students. Simply put, maybe we shouldn't be telling our kids how to feel rewarded, and instead we should give the the autonomy to find their own reward.

Curiosity Makes Us Better at Learning Everything (Including the Boring Stuff)

It's no surprise that the more curious we are about something, the better we are at learning about it. However, a new study published in Neuron has findings that go beyond that:

More surprising, however, was that once their curiosity was aroused, they showed better learning of entirely unrelated information... that they encountered but were not necessarily curious about. People were also better able to retain the information learned during a curious state across a 24-hour delay. 

Curiosity is a form of intrinsic motivation, which means we get a rewarding feeling just by learning about what interests us. According to this study, curiosity also creates a state of mind where we feel rewarded no matter what we are learning about. That means students will learn more and retain more information about anything, as long as they are kept in a curious state.

As  teachers and youth workers, this means we must talk to our students and learn what makes them curious. Then we can plan lessons around that curiosity, allowing them to absorb extra -- even unrelated -- information and feel good about everything they learned.

Trainings Available

Motivate Youth is pleased to introduce our new trainings in Motivational Interviewing (MI). Our four hour-long trainings cover the principles of MI and apply them to youth work. The practical, interactive trainings can be highly customized to meet any organization's needs.

MI has been scientifically shown to be an effective approach to increasing the grades of middle school students. These short, simple conversations between adults and youth can help children and teens find their internal motivation, and use that to succeed in school.

Right now, many of the trainings are available for free or at a reduced cost. For more information, please contact Aaron Romens at aaron@motivateyouth.org.