[00:01] SPEAKER_01:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:15] SPEAKER_00:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm thrilled that my guest today is Larry Ferlazzo. You will see Larry's name everywhere across the internet if you follow anything education related.
[00:25] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00:
Larry, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks for the invitation, Justin. I think we probably first connected through Education Week when I was writing a blog there, and you, to this day, write a very popular blog there. Could you tell us a little bit about the writing you do at Ed Week? Sure.
[00:43] SPEAKER_02:
It's called Classroom Q&A, and educators send in questions. I get multiple questions. educators from around the country and world to respond to those questions, as well as throwing in my two cents worth, ranging from classroom management issues to teacher attrition. We've got a question coming up about how do you balance between work and home. And it's a lot of fun. And it's great getting different perspectives, short perspectives that oftentimes conflict with one another.
[01:16] SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely. I don't think it would be much of an exaggeration at all to say you probably have more perspective on the classroom and on education in the United States than just about anyone else. So really enjoy all of your writing everywhere. And we're here today to talk about your new book, Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners, Strategies to Help Students Thrive in School and Beyond. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about where that book came from and why you decided to write this particular book.
[01:43] SPEAKER_02:
Well, this is sort of the third book in what I jokingly call my trilogy, my student motivation trilogy. I've written two previous books on the topic, and it comes from initially my previous career. I spent 19 years working as a community organizer prior to becoming a high school teacher 11 years ago. And in organizing, it's all about trying to identify people's intrinsic motivation. You know, what it is that people's hopes and dreams, where they want to be and how to tie into that to help people move forward. And what I've been doing in my career as a teacher is trying to apply a lot of what I learned in organizing
[02:33]
to the classroom and have had some success some failures but uh it's it's always been interesting so in this my first two books first book was called helping students motivate themselves and the second was self-driven learning basically shares a lot of research and experience in the classroom that both my colleagues and i have had in applying some of this research and some of our own experiences about intrinsic motivation and this third book shares more of those ideas. I think the two reasons that prompted me to do this third book were one, additionally, a new research and new experiences. And secondly, concern about what's, I think what's been happening, there's been a great deal of interest in social emotional learning recently.
[03:26]
And I think that's great. I'm a big supporter of that. And my book's are a lot about supporting social-emotional learning skills. However, I've been getting a sense that there have been attempts by some to manipulate social-emotional learning. I actually wrote a piece for the Washington Post on this called The Manipulation of Social-Emotional Learning that are pushing this idea of what I call the let-them-eat-character strategy. Instead of providing the needed resources and support to public schools, that they're pushing this idea that social-emotional learning is all about, it's just a question of character and gritting, you know, and gritting your teeth and doing it.
[04:08]
And that's the, I mean, just recently, David Brooks, who's been one of the more outspoken supporters of this Let Them Eat character strategy, talked about how, you know, it hasn't been the, it isn't the money that's put into it. resources to help people get out of poverty, that really what the poor people need to do is bootstrap themselves, that it's a problem of psychology. So I thought that it was important to directly call people on those perspectives and feel that that is a real unfortunate development in the field of social and emotional learning.
[04:49] SPEAKER_00:
Well, it's a very convenient set of excuses for us to give ourselves as the adults responsible for students to say to students, you know, it doesn't matter how difficult your circumstances are or what kind of job we're doing as adults. Just, you know, just tough it out, develop grit, develop perseverance and character. And and that will solve your problems. And I think it's it's a tough, tough balance to strike, because certainly we do want students to develop the character qualities of perseverance that will give them the greatest chance of success. But you see a lot of kind of excuse making happening or a lot of kind of is it blame or excuse making? How do you see it?
[05:27] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, well, I think it's easier. I did a Google Ngram viewer has this ability to search for when words were most certain words were most used across history. I explored this idea of teaching character. you know, this phrase. And the two times when they peaked, you know, the use of those terms in writing was at the depths of the Great Depression and during our recent Great Recession. That it is very interesting to see the chart which I published in Ed Week that it is cheaper and it is easier.
[06:10]
to use that strategy than to provide the needed resources and to deal with issues around economic inequality, race, poverty.
[06:21] SPEAKER_00:
Well, and I know you're kind of afraid of those issues and you stay completely away from them, right? Right. So take us into kind of the alternative perspective there where as adults, we are taking responsibility for, as you say in the title of the book, building a community of self-motivated learners. So how can we both retain that responsibility that we have as adults and yet hand things over to students in terms of taking ownership of their education, you know, making meaningful choices and so on?
[06:48] SPEAKER_02:
First thing, I want to make it clear, I am a big supporter of social-emotional learning skills development. And I just think they have their place and they have to be kept in their place. I think the challenge to us educators is our students clearly show grit and intrinsic motivation in lots of arenas, including sports, older siblings are taking care of younger siblings, all sorts of things like that. And one of our challenges is to try to explore that. how we can, what Ken Robertson says, create the conditions in which they can, they feel like they wanna bring those same qualities to the arena of a classroom. Unfortunately, Many of us feel that one way to do that is through extrinsic motivation, through points, through carrots, rewards, or punishments.
[07:43] SPEAKER_00:
Sure, basically everything we use to structure the school day for students, right?
[07:46] SPEAKER_02:
Right, right, right. And plenty of research, ranging from Daniel Pink to Edward Deci, shows that extrinsic motivation works very well to encourage mechanical activities that require very little thought. However, the same research shows that it does not work for cultivating creative higher-order thinking.
[08:15] SPEAKER_00:
Well, and I appreciate these chapter titles. I want to read a couple of chapter titles from the middle of the book. You have, how can you get students more interested in reading and writing? How can you get students to transfer their knowledge and skills from one class to other classes and outside of school situations? How can you help students want to live a physically healthy lifestyle? So you're talking about big picture stuff, not, you know, I want you to complete this worksheet by the end of the period.
[08:36] SPEAKER_02:
No, no, it's all about higher order skills. And the idea that a whole chapter on transfer of learning, it's hard to imagine. I mean, that's really the basis for our goal for all of school. We don't want to try to raise a bunch of good test takers. We want to raise people who are able to apply what they're learning to the rest of their life. And that's the key.
[09:02]
And the National Academy of Sciences has pointed out that schools are awful at that. They're not just bad, they're awful. But there are lots of different things that we can do to try to cultivate that. But it's just a little bit outside the box, the way we generally operate. And it's not like – I mean, all of us. I don't know a teacher who's never used extrinsic motivation or a parent who's never used it.
[09:28]
I mean, we do it sometimes. Sometimes you just got to get the kid to do something so you can get – focused on the other 30 kids in the classroom, right? And sometimes it does, it can work very quickly. You just got to get something done. But then you want to have an exit strategy and be prepared to be able to talk with the student at a different time about this idea of intrinsic motivation. And what researchers have found is that for something to be, you know, to cultivate intrinsic motivation, there are four key elements.
[09:59]
One is autonomy. where you feel some degree of control in what you're doing and how you're doing it. Some voice in that. Competence, the ability to be successful at. Relatedness, where the activity that you're doing helps you to connect with someone who you like or whom you respect. And then relevance, that it's somehow connected to your interests or your hopes and dreams for yourselves.
[10:30]
Those are the key elements that are necessary for the conditions to cultivate intrinsic motivation.
[10:38] SPEAKER_00:
Larry, I feel like that trade-off between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is one that we're always thinking about. We want to use intrinsic motivation as much as possible. And honestly, there are a lot of people out there in our world of education who are doing their best to make us feel bad about the fact that we rely so heavily on extrinsic motivation. But after hearing a keynote on that topic, One of my big takeaways was, okay, we know what not to do. We know not to rely on grades, not to rely on points, not to rely on anything that really keeps ownership of the motivation away from students. We want to hand it over to students.
[11:17]
But in your book, I get the impression that people walk away from reading it. I would just have to assume that after people read your book, they don't have that same feeling that I had after hearing one of those kind of negative keynotes that we just, we know what not to do, but we don't know what to do. Because looking at this, it's full of very specific strategies for meeting those, for creating those four conditions that you just described. For example, getting students to transfer knowledge and skills from one class to another. You have a little bit about simulations and metacognition. Is there anything you want to highlight for us?
[11:55]
I think in my experience,
[11:56] SPEAKER_02:
The most simple thing and the easiest strategy that researchers have found that works for transfer of knowledge is after a lesson, having students write a short paragraph of how they think they might apply what they just learned to another class, another aspect of their lives. And the research has shown that student achievement has risen. And they just do that exercise a few times during the semester. So, I mean, that's a very simple thing that anybody can do, like tomorrow, that has worked. And I'm all for simple and effective. That it's always best...
[12:42]
For, again, as what research has shown, it's always much better for students to be able to identify how they can use what they're learning. But that doesn't mean that teachers shouldn't necessarily point it out, point out things that students may not be aware of about how to, you know, how to use specific things. But I love it. I mean, I certainly always encourage students to ask why. when we're learning stuff. I mean, and usually the first student who asked that during the semester, I say, okay, well, that's your job semester.
[13:14]
When we're learning stuff, you should raise that question. And then I put it back. I usually just put it back on the students. Why do you think you might be learning this?
[13:22] SPEAKER_00:
And I also wanted to ask, toward the end of the book, you have a chapter on helping students get into a state of flow. Could you tell us a little bit about what that flow state means in the classroom and why you think it matters?
[13:34] SPEAKER_02:
Flow, I mean, this concept of flow which has been developed, basically it means you're just so caught up in the activity that you're doing you lose track of time. And during my classroom, I don't think there's any higher praise when I hear a student say, boy, this class went fast. And it's really the highest degree of intrinsic motivation that we can develop where you're so involved in something. And they did an extensive survey and found that the only arena where teenagers felt a less of a sense of flow than school was when they were working at a job like McDonald's. Other than that, they had many more opportunities when they felt like they were in a sense of flow.
[14:25]
I mean, at home, with friends, in sports, and extracurricular stuff. But in the classroom, it doesn't get much worse. You know, and there are a number of things that we can do. I mean, clearly this idea of developing opportunities for autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance all go into helping create opportunities for sense of flow. It's not like they're going to have a sense of flow every time. None of us do that.
[14:53]
But let's try to... create some of those opportunities by keeping these four elements in mind.
[15:01] SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely. Well, and it sounds like it's almost a third level of motivation. You know, if we have extrinsic motivation as kind of farthest to the left, the least desirable form of motivation, and then intrinsic motivation is better than that. It almost sounds like flow is a level where it's not even that anything has to justify the task. It's not as if a student is saying, well, I am intrinsically motivated. I want to go to college.
[15:25]
I have these goals for myself. Therefore, I will do this thing that I just kind of have to do and is not enjoyable. It's actually not even relying on kind of outside resources to kind of motivate the task at hand. It's like it's inherent to the activity.
[15:40] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. And I think all intrinsic motivation can be You know, this idea of relevance does not necessarily mean it has to be relevant to where they want to be, their hopes and dreams. It's relevant to their interest. You know, they're just interested in, you know, whatever the activity is. You know, and it's a combination of things. They're liking working with people they're working with.
[16:03]
They're naturally inquisitive. You know, this idea of trying to cultivate a sense of curiosity. You know, all those things, you know, combine. And I think the point of the book and my point is to try to – we just always want to try to be striving for this sort of thing. It doesn't mean we can always reach it. And listen, I mean it's – my classroom is not – I wouldn't say is a model, a constant model of students being intrinsically motivated all the time.
[16:37]
But, you know, but I'm trying, right? And I think, you know, research offers a lot of, you know, a lot of good ideas. And I try to share both the successes and failures from my classroom. And I'm lucky enough that my colleagues want to try this stuff out too.
[16:56] SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely. I think one thing I really appreciate about your writing and about the breadth and the depth of your work is that when your repertoire is that expansive, when you have more than one trick up your sleeve, I think that gives you so many more opportunities to reach students and to put those conditions in place where they can experience flow, they can experience intrinsic motivation because we're not just giving them kind of one one narrow set of choices that may or may not work for them. So really appreciate all of your work, Larry, and appreciate your time today in talking about building a community of self-motivated learners. If you could make one recommendation, if you have some sort of magic wand in your desk that could be used to get the school leaders everywhere to heed your advice, what would you have them do?
[17:49]
What would you have us do based on what you've written in the book?
[17:52] SPEAKER_02:
The piece of advice I always offer teachers, in the context of classroom management, at least, is a piece of advice that I actually read by Marvin Marshall, who's written about positive classroom management strategies. And I always try to keep in mind his advice that before you do something, think to yourself, is what I'm going to do going to bring me closer in relationship to the student or push us further apart? And if it's the latter, odds are you don't want to do it. Doesn't mean you can't be forceful and you got to be a yes person and you got to let everything go. But how you approach those tensions and conflicts, as we know in our own lives, can result in us getting closer together or further apart.
[18:46] SPEAKER_00:
Well, Larry, as you know, at the Principal Center, one of our big emphases is on productivity. And I just have to guess that you are one of the most productive people that I've ever met because of the sheer amount of writing that I see you doing. I know you are a classroom teacher, so you're not gifted with 14 hours a day where you can sit in your writer's cabin and And write for Ed Week in the Washington Post and the books that you have in print. Can you give us any advice on managing our time or being productive just to get as much done as you do?
[19:19] SPEAKER_02:
Well, I think the primary reason that I'm able to be productive is I have created the conditions necessary for motivation for myself of productivity. Autonomy, competence, readiness, and relevance, that I'm able to connect up everything I do, connect up with people who I want to be connected with, like you, Justin. I'm able to constantly learn and try to open myself up to critique. I'm in a great school where a lot of autonomy is given, but also in terms of competence where a lot of professional development is offered, too. And I think the other key thing – I mean I just try to create a situation where everything I do fits into those.
[20:11]
And if it doesn't fit into those, I generally just don't do it. And I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where I don't have to. Is it fair to say that you enjoy the writing that you do a great deal? Well, I enjoy the writing. It has a lot of intellectual stimulation and – it helps make me a better teacher. I mean, basically everything I do is geared towards helping me be a better teacher.
[20:42]
I mean, I write about resources I find that I use in the classroom. I write about lessons I do that I do in the classroom. It helps me think. It helps me do it. I highlight the work of students, and that helps them see – that they are doing really good work and it promotes their sense of competence. The more we can do to support each other's in creating those conditions for intrinsic motivation, the more principals can do that for teachers, the more teachers can do that for students, the better we're all going to be.
[21:17] SPEAKER_00:
Well, it is a true privilege to benefit as an observer from your intrinsic motivation and the writing that you do around the web and in your books. Larry, thank you so much for joining us for Principal Center Radio. Great. Thanks a lot, Justin.
[21:33] SPEAKER_01:
And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.
[21:37] SPEAKER_00:
So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Larry Ferlazzo about intrinsic motivation? One big thing that stands out to me is this idea of flow. And it's something we seek as adults. We seek it in our work. We enjoy those times when we have the opportunity to experience flow. And you might experience flow when you're...
[21:59]
Out on a Saturday doing something that you love. You may experience flow when you're in your element on the job as an administrator. But I want to challenge you to think about flow in terms of students. When in the school day do students have a real chance to experience flow? If I think about the times when I'm most productive, it's not just that I have a clear purpose and there are incentives for me to finish what I'm doing. And it's not just that I have a higher purpose and that I'm intrinsically motivated to do something.
[22:31]
It's that the work itself puts me in that flow state that Larry and I were talking about. And one of the strategies that we didn't really get much of a chance to touch on today was reducing interruptions. And Larry talks about this in chapter six of his book. This is something that as school leaders, we have the opportunity to influence. And if you've ever been in a school where. the announcements are just buzzing in all day long so and so come to the office so and so please call the office attention all students blah blah blah we have the power to absolutely destroy students concentration and flow state and create a sense of frustration and as leaders we don't necessarily have the power to ensure that students can be in a flow state regularly throughout the day But we do have the power to ensure that the conditions are there.
[23:19]
So I don't know if announcements are a problem in your school. They're probably not. But I want you to think about what students experience is throughout the day and look at the opportunities that they have to really get into their work and to really enjoy it at a deep level. And if you want to take this a level further, if you want to really challenge yourself, get outside of your comfort zone and really get into students' shoes, I want to challenge you to do something that one of my mentors challenged us to do many years ago, and that is shadow a student for an entire day. Now, you may be thinking that devoting a whole day to following a student around and just kind of sitting in their shoes and sitting in the classes that they're sitting in, you may think that's impossible, but I want to challenge you to plan for it. Block out the time, pick a day or maybe even a half day and talk to a student, ask if they mind you following them around and seeing what they see and just go through the day with a student's eyes and see what opportunities you can identify as a leader
[24:17]
to improve the conditions for motivation in your school.
[24:21] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
