Last time, I looked at teacher credibility and its four components. (Read that post here.) This time, I want to examine the same crucial topic from a negative angle. What are the ways in which we might lessen our students’ belief in our ability to help them succeed? How might we undermine their perceptions of Trust, […]
student motivation
Teacher Credibility: If You Build It, They Will Learn (Here’s How)
We’ve all heard the hoo-yah speeches before, the feel-good stuff like, “Be a teacher your students believe in! Be someone they know can take them where they need to go! Make them know that you will make a positive difference in their life! If they believe, they can achieve!!!” Fantastically, however, this theme of the importance of having our kids […]
A Simple Activity for Teaching About Procrastination
My ninth graders tend to ride the struggle bus when it comes to procrastination. There are, of course, always the kids who make my jaw drop with their teachability on work habits — when I teach them how to apply bits of effort to their studies each day, these kids put it into practice and […]
Unicorns and Growth Mindset
Last spring, a student said to me, “Well, I’m just not a map person. I’m not good at maps.” And I responded, “Well, Adam, flying unicorns are real.” To which Adam replied, “Um… what?” Growth mindset isn’t just a cute idea The preponderance of evidence supporting the brain’s malleability and the human ability to learn […]
How to Do Hard Things
The problem with our classes, from a motivational standpoint, is they’ve been surpassed by video games. Video games, as I laid out in my argument last week, are great at making players want to spend the time/effort/frustration costs of mastery; my world history class, less so. The solution, however, isn’t to “gamify” my class; rather, it’s to teach our students, […]