Teaching requires the consent of students, and discontent will not be chased away by the exercise of power.

- John Nicholls, 1993

Behavior

• Students often engage in behaviors that allow them to avoid a sense of failure. Failure to learn or perform sometimes leads students to put the blame on something else so there won't be a threat to self. Source of the behavior: Avoid the pain of insult to the sense of self-worth by putting blame anywhere other than on self.
• We need to work with students in a way that sidesteps responsibility-avoiding tactics (blaming, procrastinating, discounting the value of the experience, becoming uninvolved, faulting circumstances). We can (1)Focus on the problem at hand and (2) give the offender no opportunity for displacement.
• Focus on the problem at hand. Don't allow the student to lead the conversation on a distracting departure to another subject.
• Give the offender no room for displacement. Help the student focus only on the behavior in question and who is responsible for changing it.

Motivation

• Motivation comes from within. It is always what we want at the time that determines our behavior. We choose our behavior based on how it will serve our needs (in the moment, or in the future).
• Scenario: "A bunch of kids are told they're going to be given a task, such as recognizing patterns or rearranging letters. Some are informed that this is a test, that it will count for a grade, or that they are going to be told how well they've done or videotaped so their performance can be evaluated. The others, meanwhile, are encouraged to think of this as an opportunity to learn rather than do well. Then each student is allowed to choose how hard a version of the task he or she wants to try. The result is always the same: those who have been told it's an "opportuniy to learn" are more willing to challenge themselves than those who had been led to think about how well they'll do."
• We as teachers are presented with the difficult challenge of how to help students become motivated from within. We can do so by showing them how information being given will be of value to them in the short-term (better grades, which leads to better opportunites after school) and the long-term (more opportunities after school leads to more choices and freedom in life). We can also show them how the information being given has value to them simply in knowing it, because knowing it will make a person better equiped to participate in life. Why do we teach students about gravity and democracy? Why do we teach students how to question when they read, or how to connect to the text when they read? So they will perform better on tests, get into college, get high quality jobs and feel successful and happy? Yes, and we also teach them about gravity, democracy, and how to become a stronger reader because it will benefit them as human beings to know these things.
• Take a common classroom behavior - talking. Students keep quiet only when they see it to their benefit to do so. Many students who keep quiet when information is presented do so because they see it to their benefit (they see it will satisfy a need, either in the short-term, or in the long-term). Students who keep quiet when information is being given may perceive the information to be of some value to them. They may connect that what is being taught will be some value to them in the short-term or long-term future. Consider when the teacher is giving information about an upcoming class ski trip. Students who are going on the ski trip will be quiet because the information is valuable. Students who are not going on the trip may not see any benefit in listening to the information presented, and may talk to other students. Consider when the teacher is presenting information on the Industrial Revolution. Some students are quiet because they see it to their benefit to hear the information so they can do well on the test. Others are quiet because they know that doing well on the test will help them get the grades they need to get into honors courses, which will help in their long-term plan to get into college. Still others, and sadly there are few, do it because they see the information to be of value in itself. This is where good teaching comes in. The teachers present the information in a way that lets the student's know how it will be of value to them in their everyday lives. They clearly explain why it can be of value and how it can serve their needs to know the information. As for the students who don't keep quiet, well, they see no benefit to themselves to keep quiet. They do not percieve how the information can benefit them in any way, and they do not perceive the information presented will in any way satisfy any need they have.

Motivating students

• Effective teachers understand that coercive messages will do little to motivate students. Effective teachers try to give students the kind of information that will cognitively guide them to do as they are directed because it is as much or more to their benefit as it is to the teacher's. If the teacher succeeds, it is very likely that the students will decide not only to do the work but to do it well.
• If the task that the students are asked to do also satisfies one more of their basic needs, a great deal of work gets done.
• How do we teach our students and satisfy their needs? What are their needs? They have a need for love and belonging, a need for power, a need for freedom, and a need for the fun of learning.

Love and belonging need - Learning as a member of a small learning team is much more need-satisfying than learning individually. When we can promote and support student cooperation, we will lay the foundation for quality work.

Power need - It is more need-satisfying to be given a voice in how learning will happen, as well as how it will be assessed, rather than being told how the learning is expected to happen and how it will be assessed. Even when students are given a small voice in how things will be run, it helps their need for power. When the students have a voice in how things are done, they feel some ownership of what is happening. It feels like they have some control, however small, over their lives. Things are not happening to them or being forced on them. They've had a say in things too.

Freedom need - The freedom need is met when students have choices. Students are developing their own self-concepts and are exploring who they are. When they are given choices, it satisfies the need to be free to make decisions for themselves, to express themselves, and to work on defining who they are.

Fun of learning need - If we can remember the amazing need-satisfying feeling we get when we discover something new, figure something out for ourselves, and expand our way of thinking, we will understand this need.

Human needs and Motivation

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, psychology professors and researchers of motivation and self-determination (“To be self-determined is to endorse one’s actions at the highest level of reflection. When self-determined people experience a sense of freedom to do what is interesting, personally important, and vitalizing.”), have proposed three universal human needs. Interestingly, they are remarkably similar to Glasser’s Choice Theory needs.

The needs:

1) Autonomy – a need for self-determination; the experience of oneself as the origin of decisions rather than as the victim of things outside one’s control.

Glasser – need for freedom and power

2) Relatedness – a need for connection to others, for belonging and love and affirmation.

Glasser – need for love and belonging

3) Competence – a need to take pleasure from learning new things, from acquiring skills and putting them to use.

Glasser – fun of learning

Alfie Kohn suggests that our first questions about students should be, “What do they require to flourish? How can we provide those things?”

He also suggests that when students are off-task, our first response should be to ask, “What’s the task?” Does the student have any freedom of choice? Is the student able to relate to others and experience being part of a group? Is the student given some responsibility and power within the group?

Possible reasons for off-task behavior:

- assignment or material is too difficult for a student

- student perceives the tasks they are given as not worth doing

- too many worksheets, textbooks, and lectures

How do we work with students to create a meaningful curriculum that stretches their thinking, elicits their curiosity, and helps them reflect more skillfully on questions that are already important to them???

• Kohn, Alfie.__Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community__, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 2006.

Shared Control

• We either give control on our terms, or the kids will take it on theirs.
• Do I want to control kids or do I want to obtain their cooperation?
• Control battles are destructive. They create stress in the classroom, hinder achievement, and result in dysfunctional behaviors.
• Limits are important because they determine the boundary of our security. Without certain limits we feel anxious.
• Imagine walking onto a car lot and having the salesperson say, "Either buy a car or get off the lot." This salesperson has limits, but they are so confining that the customer has no room for any control.
• We can provide the opportunity for control through choices (posed by asking questions). Choices are effective ways to share control.

Some thoughts on changing behavior in the classroom

• Change takes time.
• Everyone's experience is different. We must attempt to understand a student's perception of events before we can affect real change.
• Nonverbal language speaks loud.
• Self-worth is to be encouraged. Any interaction that inflicts damage on a student's sense of self-worth will boomerang and probably set the offending perceptions even deeper. It is important to keep in mind that your intention is to boost self-worth, not diminish it.
• Change moves from the inside out. Our minds are changed from within. The more we try to make someone change, the more likely we are to lock them into the offending behavior.

The problem with "Classroom Management"

Many discipline programs refer to effective classroom management in these terms:

- “conformity and obedience”

- students are busy doing the “assigned work”

- “when long periods of student talk (recitations) were avoided”

- teacher retains control over pacing

- “very highly structured” tasks

The objective of discipline programs is not to promote depth of understanding, or continuing motivation to learn, or concern for others. It is to maximize time on task and obedience to authority.

• Kohn, Alfie.__Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community__, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 2006.

Beyond Behavior

Here are two students in two different classrooms, each of whom gave half his lunch to someone else. The first student did so in the hope that the teacher would notice this and praise him: “Isn’t that a nice thing to do! I’m so proud of you! I really appreciate your sharing like that!” The second student did so without knowing or caring whether the teacher saw him: he was simply concerned that the kid sitting next to him might go hungry.

The two behaviors are identical. What matters are the reasons and feelings that lie beneath. Discipline programs can (temporarily) change behavior, but they cannot help people to grow. The latter requires a very different orientation in the classroom: looking “through” a given action in order to understand the motives that gave rise to it as well as figuring out how to have some effect on those motives.

Consider, then, a specific contrast between two ways of responding to a child who shared his lunch. The teacher who is preoccupied with the behavior – and who seeks, in this case, to produce more of it – would probably resort to praise. A different approach would be to help the child attend to how his decision to share has affected someone else (in this case, the recipient of his food). “Boy, would you look at Jaime’s face. He is one happy guy now that he has enough to eat, isn’t he?” This response is concerned with helping the sharer to experience the effects of sharing and to come to see himself as the kind of person who wants to make other people feel good – irrespective of verbal rewards.

• Kohn, Alfie.__Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community__, ASCD, Alexandria, VA, 1996, 2006.

Two different classroom scenarios

Discipline