Yesterday I was convicted of my reliance on good. Today, I reflected on ways we as educators convict our students. What is the excuse that you use when your students don't learn? I'll give you a minute to think that one over.
The answer to that question could be different for everyone. There are those that will sit on a really high horse and exclaim that they would NEVER make excuses. To be quite candid, they're lying. Everyone has done it. We have all had students struggle or fail and immediately felt defensive. The excuses are those things that fly out of our mouths in that weak moment when we are trying to protect ourselves.
EFFORT
For me, this is the number one math teacher excuse that I hear and have uttered myself. It isn't exclusive to the math world by any means, but we sometimes sing this excuse in round at the top of our lungs. Because everyone MUST hear it.
"If these kids would just do their work..."
"My students are so lazy."
"They don't want to learn."
"They don't even try."
The list goes on and on, and every statement points a finger directly back at the student and screams, "It's all your fault because I was doing my job." It isn't pretty. They aren't our proudest moments. It's reality though. We have all done it because it's easier to point the finger away from us than to confront the fact that we may need to change.
I've searched all my years of teaching, but I have never found the magic wand that makes every kid come into my classroom loving math and excited to work hard at thinking mathematically. They don't come with a "try harder" button that we can excitedly press every time the students want to give up. And I can tell a student a million times to "just try", but that doesn't guarantee a change in behavior.
So, what can I do? I can't force any student to want to work really hard just by telling them they should do it. The only thing I can control is myself. Me. The teacher in the classroom. Not the students. Or the principal. Or the district. Just ME.
While sitting in a session today, I was speaking with a math teacher from California. We were discussing Timothy Kanold's presentation of research showing that students must be praised for working hard instead of for being "smart". The idea is that we should not be praising students for something they feel is fixed and cannot change. Students think they are either smart or they're not. Therefore, success and praise isn't linked to doing anything, but rather it's linked to innate ability. As educators, we know this assumption is false, but we need to communicate that to our students by giving praise and rewards when students really put in authentic effort towards learning.
Back to my Californian colleague. In a very mild mannered voice, he made a statement that should be common sense and yet gets completely overlooked in many classrooms and schools today. He simply said, "We need to talk to them and show them what good effort actually looks like. Here's what I do to model good effort in my classroom."
Wow! How simple, but how powerful is that reminder? If we want students to work hard, we need to be willing to show them what that looks like and then hold them to that standard. Good effort isn't writing an answer on a page. It isn't copying procedures. Good effort is being able to show our mathematical processes and communicate to others what we did and why it makes sense.
Show them, and let them show me. Put in the effort. After all, it's a two way street.
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