Getting Past “I Tried That. It Doesn’t Work.”

Dear colleague,

Once in a while, I'll hear a student or a teacher say this when I bring up a strategy: “I tried that. It doesn't work.”

On its face, this is a frustrating thing for a teacher to hear. After all, the person seems to have come to the conclusion that there's nothing more to learn here. They checked the box. They didn't get the results they were after. And now they're done.

But if you dig deeper, this is actually a really helpful communication. The person is saying, “Hey, I've got a motivation problem. The effort didn't pay off. I can't be successful doing that.” It's Effort/Efficacy language. The person is stuck somewhere within the Effort/Efficacy Doom Loop.

The key question we want to help folks ask here is, “Hmm… I wonder why?”

• It could be that the effort put forth — “I tried that” — was ineffective. Maybe a teacher attempted a Moment of Genuine Connection (MGC), for example, but it was rote, unfeeling, or disingenuous. Maybe a student studied with self-quizzing, but they were checking their phone pings throughout the study session. So here it helps to ask questions about what exactly they tried; we want to point the learner's mind toward the specifics of the effort in question.
• It could be that they have an unhelpful definition of success. What does “it didn't work” mean? If they were hoping that an MGC was going to transform student behaviors overnight, that's a problem. That's not what MGCs do. If it was, “Get an A on the test,” that's a problem. The point of studying is mastering the material. The questions then are, what did the test show me about my level of mastery? How does that relate to the specific kind of work that I did? This is why part of the Define Success strategy in The Will to Learn (Strategy #8) is to do so wisely.
• And it could also be that other variables are at play. There are about infinity variables at play in any given learning situation. Trying to see the whole picture is part of what makes this job both difficult and fascinating.

When we're not curious about setbacks, the work gets to be a heavy load on our souls. But when we ARE curious, watch out — even failure can be fun and generative.

It's this kind of thinking that undergirds the whole idea of “Unpacking Outcomes, Good or Bad” (Strategy #9 in The Will to Learn). The strategy helps with Five Key Belief cultivation (in teachers or students) because it gets us curious about results — which do matter! — and helps us more accurately attribute those results to their true causes.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. If your team is wrestling with student motivation this semester, my Teacher Credibility Mini-Course gives you 10 strategies in under two hours of video. $99 for individuals, or group licenses for your whole faculty start at $499. Learn more here.