End of Year Value Booster: Ask Them

Last Tuesday, I argued that you and I as teachers should take 10 shots at telling our students why their work in our classes has mattered this school year. Between now and year’s end, give 10 short (30-60 second) mini-sermons (see Strategy #4 in The Will to Learn) that answer this question: What was it all for? The only rules for these mini-sermons are:

• Be creative.
• Speak fire.
• Have fun.

This will help cultivate Value and Credibility and Belonging — three of the Five Key Beliefs.

BUT as I argue in The Will to Learn, teacher-generated Value signals are actually the second-best approach to cultivating Value in the secondary classroom. The first-best are student-generated Value signals. These can be created rather simply.

For a warm-up one day, ask your students to respond to this prompt, preferably in writing:

• This [length of course], you’ve put in a lot of work.
• We’ve read [#] articles, written [#] pages or papers, conducted [#] experiments, learned [#] academic vocabulary words, taken [#] tests, studied [#] units, etc.
• So let’s pretend that in order to pass this class, you had to explain to a younger student why all this work was worth it. Why, to you, does this matter? What was all this work for?
• Important: you have to say more than, “I needed to pass this class to graduate.” In this imaginary world, you are arguing that the work of this class mattered all by itself — that it’s important to an actual person: you.

Now for a warning: your demotivated students are going to have a hard time with this. You can help them by framing it as a devil’s advocate sort of activity. Have them imagine that some villain walks into our class and says, “The whole year has been a waste of time. Nothing of value has come of this. Your lives have been wasted.”

To help your students, walk around while they’re writing, looking over their shoulders for any decent arguments. As you see them, call them out: “Oh, one person wrote that the difficulty of this class could make them stronger and more resilient in the future. Yes. Nice work. Keep going.”

When students are finished, do a Pair-Share. Make a big deal of the student ideas that strike you.

Before you move on, tell your students something like this:

“In a few weeks, this class will be over. My time as your teacher will be through. But the most important teacher you’ll ever have will still be with you: you. We just practiced a skill that teacher needs: the skill of finding meaning in hard work.”

At least a few of your students will walk out of this warm-up better equipped to find motivation in the future.

Best,

DSJR