Motivating high school students is difficult on a good day. They have their friends, their sports, and…let’s face it…their phones…which are WAY more interesting and motivating than learning about algorithms or counting moles (though I will admit, Mole Day WAS really fun when I was in school).
Those are the average students…the ones that are difficult…But what about the below average, and the below the below average students?
Let’s talk about motivating high school students who “won’t” because they can’t.
I’m a special education teacher, and I live and breath in the lowest 25% when it comes to academics. My kids are the ones who have struggled…often failed…for 8 or more years. Many of my kids have been told through their test scores, grades, peers, and sometimes evern teachers that they aren’t good enough…that they “can’t“.
By the times they get to me, a vast majority of the lowest 25% believe they can’t, they will never be able to, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Why try when you have no chance? Why bother even showing up?
This is my struggle every single day. It is a fight to get some of my students to open a book, let alone turn in an assignment. I have lamented many times to my husband about how frustrating it is to care more about a student’s grades…and future…than they do. It is frustrating. It is painful. I am exhausted.
I come to work every morning and throw myself back into the ring to fight for kids who often won’t fight for themselves.
Why do I do it day after day? Because I love my job, and I love my kids…Yes, even the one that cussed me out today over not being allowed to watch a Youtube video while I worked one-on-one to teach him Algebra. Yup, I still love that kid, because he is more than what is reflected in his grades. He is more than all the tests he has failed, assignments he hasn’t done, and office referrals on his record. I know that his potential is limitless…if I can just get him to see that. Motivating high school students is all about getting them to see their potential, when they think none exists.
The same is true for so many of my kids. We have no idea what they are capable of becoming because, for so long, they have done so little we don’t know what they can do right now.
So, What do we do? How do we fix it?
I know what the answer is not. The answer is not to bust the kids further down, get frustrated with them, or write as many referrals as we can to make a paper trail.
After working with some of the most difficult students, with the lowest academic records, with the worst work completion rates, I can say that getting negative with these students does not work. The way I think about it is; if people constantly told me how lazy I was and how little I care, I wouldn’t try to improve. These people have judged me, found me lacking, and it feels safer to let them believe the worst of me rather than possibly fail in trying to prove them wrong. Telling these students they are failing, missing massive numbers of assignments, doing poorly on tests, skipping classes…while all true…the students KNOW all this, and saying it again is a waste of your breath and will just alienate the student more.
So, if negativity doesn’t work, surely positivity will motivate the students! While I agree, a little positivity goes a long way; just being positive is not going to cut it with the most unmotivated students. Believe me, I have tried…really hard. I have been so bubbly and positive, I could have been a Starburst or a jelly bean. I have played the cheerleader role better than the state cheerleading champions. Some of the kids laughed. They rolled their eyes and continued not doing what was asked of them. Joking, cajoling, being positive, being negative…none of it works when students are THIS unmotivated.
Alright…If nothing works, do we just give up?
I wanted to last year. With two students in particular. Both barely made it to being sophomores in credits, though they should be Juniors. Horrible reputations for not doing work, having disrespectful attitudes, and being completely devoid of motivation. I was told by 3 separate teachers that the reason these boys received any credit at all was because their teachers didn’t want to have them a 3rd year in a row.
Then they came to me and my caseload…
I tried EVERYTHING I mentioned above and more with them. I tried every single piece of advice anyone would give me. At one point, I was certain that one of them was going to punch me in the face, or I would walk out to slashed tires. I am incredibly stubborn and refused to leave them alone about their grades.
Then, one teacher, in the teacher’s lounge, finally clued me into reality. I will never forget what she said. “Why are you wasting your time on him? He has never been anything, and will never be anything. He’s given up, why don’t you? Help the ones who want to learn and forget the rest.”
This was applauded by the other teachers in the lounge for “saying what we all were thinking but weren’t allowed to say”. I left that lounge disheartened, on the verge of tears, and feeling like a complete failure. These teachers must be right, they’ve been doing this for years!
My students teach me so much more than I teach them sometimes.
As I walked, a student of mine came running down the hall yelling my name. She had tears running to her chin. The SRO stopped her, told her to quit running and yelling, and she said “I have to tell School-Mom what happened!” She had earned a C on a test in Algebra that we had worked incredibly hard and studied for. A “C” doesn’t sound like much, but for a young lady who has had to take math in summer school since 5th grade…that “C” was the world.
The SRO made a joke about me being “school-mom”. She rolled her eyes in the most teenager way possible and said “School-Mom gets us, you don’t even know my name.”
Would this work with the boys?
I made a point of saying “hello” to my boys every time I saw them in the halls and walking in class. Wrote them up for skipping, and I talked to them to let them know I wrote them up. I wanted to know they were safe. They skipped my class less and less often over the next month.
Since they were coming to class more often, I made a point of going to each of them, sitting in a desk in the area, and asking how their weekend was, or lunch, or in-school-suspension. They slowly started talking to me….by talking….What started with grunts and head nods, slowly transformed into word-like utterances which I understood. I’m not joking when I say that these boys were tough to get to know!
One of the boys came to me, one day, and said the other was having a hard time at home and needed to talk to me. My tough student never talked about what was going on, even when I directly asked what was going on. I was about 8 months pregnant at that time. He told me he couldn’t trust a fat cow with his business, and I didn’t see him the rest of the week in class. When I saw him in the halls, wrote him up for skipping.
I messed up and was back at square 1 with him.
I changed nothing about how I treated him…even though I really wanted to cry-yell that I wasn’t a cow…Then I was out one day for training or meetings or something, and the next day he poked his head in my classroom 3 times during the day. No “hi”, no acknowledgement, just came to the room in the middle of class, looked around, saw me, and left. He didn’t come to class that day, but he did the next. If I didn’t waddle through the halls between classes, He knocked on my door at some point in the period, gave a mysterious head nod, then away he went.
He refused to do work in any of his classes, was disrespectful to all of his teachers, but I never had another behavior issue with him. He wouldn’t work for me either, but he respected my rule of having something in front of him that he was doing, so he read. In the month before I went out on maternity leave, he and I discussed 3 books he had read.
Meanwhile, my future Marine opened up and shared his dream to join the Marines and go fight for our country. He knew he had to graduate high school, but didn’t think he could. But, because I “bugged him all the time” he started bringing work to class. He started teaching me the math when my preggo-brain got bad…man my preggo brain got bad very quickly after that! His grades came up and his attitude got better in most of his classes.
When I came back from maternity leave, my boys were failing again…let’s be honest…most of my kids were failing most of their classes.
By the end of the year, my one boy was still failing everything, but he was coming to class every day and reading like I have never seen a teenager read. My other boy passed most of his classes for second semester!
That was all last year…This year I found out about a credit recovery program and was able to get both boys enrolled.
My future Marine performed so well in this alternative program that the administrators thought that he was cheating. Upon review of his work, he absolutely was not cheating, he just really was able to learn that quickly! We never saw that in our setting, but then again, did he ever really get the chance to show us? That I will never be able to answer. What I can answer is the question about his future. I learned he recovered all of his credits he was missing, but he got so far ahead that he graduated two weeks previously. He left for Marine Basic Training two weeks ago. He will graduate from Basic Training 3 weeks after his peers graduate high school.
My tough kid, who also went to the program…he actually made me cry this week. That young man came to my classroom asking for help. He had finished his program, all of his courses and will be graduating in May! He came asking for help with completing the FASFA so that he can afford to go to Welding School. The toughest kid we had in that grade, the one no one thought was going to graduate high school, let alone go on to do anything else, is working to be a Welder!
My boys have a plan. They have a future,
So, what is the answer???? HOW do we motivate high school students???
Relationships
That teacher, from the teacher’s lounge, was partially right. We cannot help students who are unwilling to help themselves. We have to give them the opportunity to help themselves, and an excuse to do it. By opportunity, I don’t mean the work we give. I mean, we have to believe in them until they believe in themselves. Motivating high school students is all about the relationship we build with them.
Reach them… Then you can teach them.
Get to know them, show them that we care and will remain in their corner no matter what happens. We have to remember that they are still KIDs. As much as they want to be treated like adults, they are not ready to be adults….not yet. We can help make them ready by being the consistent people in their lives. The people who they can turn to when they are ready to fight for themselves.
I do not care what the politicians, administrators, or experts say. If you want to motivate the unmotivated high school students, you MUST build a relationship with that student. Be true to that relationship….even when you’re 8 months pregnant and they call you out on being a cow.
Relationships are the only way to motivate students who won’t because they can’t.
To the next unmotivated kiddo on my list, I say: Do your worst kid! I’m ready for you! I’m not going to give up…fat cows don’t quit….mommas don’t quit (school or otherwise)…and neither do special education teachers….We create a land of hopes and dreams…..then….. then we make them reality.
