Tackling the Motivation Crisis: How to Activate Student Learning Without Behavior Charts, Pizza Parties, or Other Hard-to-Quit Incentive Systems

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

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_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by my guest, Mike Anderson. Mike is a veteran educator with more than 15 years of classroom experience and has worked with the responsive classroom and as an independent consultant. And his latest book is what we're here to talk about today. It's called Learning to Choose, Choosing to Learn, The Key to Student Motivation and Achievement.

[00:39] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:42] SPEAKER_01:

Mike, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks, Justin.

[00:44] SPEAKER_02:

I'm really excited to be here with you.

[00:46] SPEAKER_01:

I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about what prompted you to write this book. Because I know it's kind of blown up recently. It was mailed out to ASCD members. It was the editor's pick to go out to ASCD members worldwide. So this book is...

[01:00]

as we speak on the desks of tens of thousands of educators. So first of all, congratulations on that. But where did it come from? Tell us the origin story of learning to choose, choosing to learn.

[01:10] SPEAKER_02:

Sure. Well, so in a lot of ways, the book is, you know, 20 years in the making. As a classroom teacher, I use choice throughout my daily teaching and learning. And then I've done a lot of consulting work with schools and teachers, helping them implement choice effectively also. I think one of the driving goals that I had, I guess, behind writing the book is that I see choice used in schools, but not necessarily used well. One of the goals of this book is to help teachers use choice with more intentionality and more purpose in daily teaching and learning.

[01:45]

instead of it being something kind of like, you know, free swim at the end of a swim lesson. You know, you finish the regular work and so you can have a little choice. Or instead of it being used in these really giant, big, overwhelming ways, like through huge independent research projects, which, don't get me wrong, are fantastic. But if that's the only way that kids are getting choice, then I think we're kind of missing an opportunity to give kids more power and control over daily learning. So that's really kind of the driving force is to help empower kids to take more charge of more control of their own learning.

[02:15] SPEAKER_01:

So are you saying there's kind of a sweet spot for choice, but in between giving kids so much choice that they kind of don't know what to do and don't know where to go and don't have kind of an overall framework versus just having it be kind of a piece of candy at the end of the class kind of add on?

[02:28] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and you know, I suppose there's nothing wrong with either of those two kinds of choice. I've seen schools implement Google Time or the 20% Time or Genius Hour, and those can be really neat. But often what I see is that there are only certain kids who really get to take that opportunity. Often it's the kids who are already really academically strong who end up getting the most choice, and the kids who most need engagement who end up getting the least amount of choice. And so one of my goals is to help teachers see that choice can be a vehicle for helping kids self-differentiate their own learning through daily experiences.

[03:06] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and that seems like it would have such a huge connection to motivation, just based on self-determination theory, the idea of autonomy, that having choice is inherently motivating. It's one of the most motivating things. I'm looking at the Desi and Ryan paper on self-determination theory that I've got on my desk to read and really get into some of those ideas of how we can create an environment that motivates students. Was motivation a big factor in pursuing this work?

[03:36] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we know how motivating choice is. We know that when we give students, whether they're kids or adults, more autonomy, we can tap into their intrinsic motivation. And I think that's important. But it's also important to recognize that when choice is done really well, we're not just giving choice for the sake of giving choice. We're using choice as a vehicle for helping students take more control over their learning.

[04:02]

So the choices we offer have to be really rich, meaningful, good choices that connect with the learning that we're doing.

[04:10] SPEAKER_01:

So Mike, in the book, you talk a little bit about the idea of self-differentiation, and I'm intrigued by that because in our profession, so often we think of differentiated instruction as something that is solely the teacher's responsibility, that as the professionals, it's our job to collect data on how our students are doing and figure out what they specifically need and then differentiate instruction. But in your book, you advocate actually giving students the opportunity to differentiate for themselves. Could you talk about that a little bit?

[04:39] SPEAKER_02:

Sure, absolutely. It's something that a lot of elementary school educators are familiar with through the reader's workshop approach to teaching reading. You know, a lot of teachers who use that approach spend the first few weeks of school helping their students learn how to choose just right books. And in my classroom, a just right book was one that students could read fluently. It was a book that they knew almost all the words in, and it was a book that they wanted to read. There was some interest there.

[05:04]

And so that was an example of teaching kids how to self-differentiate their reading. They were the ones who needed to find books that were in their just right zone instead of me trying to figure that out. And that's something that we can use across the curriculum. We can use that in K-12 classrooms and we can use it across all content areas. So I think even the term differentiated instruction is one I'd like to push on a little bit. There are times when we do need to differentiate our instruction, but I'd so much rather have us focus on helping students differentiate their learning.

[05:36]

And for us to think about how we can differentiate learning opportunities for students and then empower students to make really good choices so that they're finding their sweet spot. They're finding that just right learning zone and we're helping them get there.

[05:49] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I love that example of choosing a book, but in a lot of subjects, it seems like a big risk for teachers to give choice over to students. And I know reading teachers, elementary reading teachers, are used to that kind of range of student choices. They know their students are going to be reading different books. But what are some guidelines that you've found are helpful for making this manageable? in other subjects or areas where it may be a little bit of a challenge for the teacher to kind of manage the scope or respond to the scope of what students are choosing when given the opportunity?

[06:22] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's really interesting that as I do consulting work in schools, often what I find is that teachers have a skill set around differentiating learning for students in literacy, in both reading and writing. And part of the work I do is help them transfer that skill set over to other content areas, or if I'm working with middle or high school teachers, helping them understand that skill set and adapt it. So here are a couple of examples. In one classroom I was working in, a fifth grade teacher was focusing on math skill. He was working on long division.

[06:56]

And so he gave his students several different choices about how they could practice the skill of long division. And he knew he had kids all over the place. Some of them were still struggling with basic math fact fluency. Some of them really had basic long division down. So the three options were, one, there was a really traditional worksheet where he created 20 or 25 problems, and he offered students the opportunity to pick and choose the problems on that page that felt like a just right challenge for them, one that would give them a little push but that they could also be successful with. The second option was a blank worksheet in which the kids themselves would create their own just right math problems.

[07:33]

Again, with that goal of finding the sweet spot of problems that would give them a push, but that they could also be successful with. And then the third option was another worksheet. And I'm not a huge fan of worksheets, but I also think they've been kind of vilified. You know, there's a time and place for them. So the third option. was a worksheet where he had created some long division problems and had solved each one, but had left a mistake in each one.

[07:58]

And the student's goal, if they chose that sheet to work on, was that they had to find and fix the mistake. So then he said to the students, our goal is to practice long division, and our goal is that we spend some time in that just right learning zone where you're getting a good push, but where you can be successful and you can grow. So think about which of these three options would offer that best push for you. And then he looked it up to the students to decide. And then he went around and did really great coaching, which was cool to see. So another example comes from a high school.

[08:29]

I was working with a group of teachers in Manhattan and there was a drama teacher who was kind of pushing back a little bit. He was like, come on, Mike, I can't give choice in drama. We're all doing the play at Hamlet. You know, we're all going to take Hamlet. We're going to read Hamlet and then we're going to write our own screenplay and act it out. There's no place for choice here.

[08:46]

Everybody's got to do the same thing at the same time. And I said, okay, well, I'm curious, does everybody find success with reading Hamlet in the form that you've given it? And he kind of acknowledged, well, you know, some kids, they've got a lot of stuff going on after school. They have a hard time fitting it in. The language is pretty complex for some of them. And then I asked if he had any other versions.

[09:06]

And as it turns out, he had a couple of other versions. One was an annotated version of Hamlet, and another one was an online plain English version, which had two columns. It had Shakespeare's play on the left, and then the plain English text on the right. And so I asked, what would it look like in your class if you offered students the option of either of those three kinds of, either of those three versions of the play, the original, the annotated, or the plain English text? And he said, well, yeah, I guess that would work because the goal is that everybody takes the play in so that they're ready to rewrite it. And I know that that would help some kids really understand it better, and it would also help others manage their time.

[09:44]

So that was the choice that he was going to offer with his students.

[09:47] SPEAKER_01:

Well, it sounds like you're doing with the adults that you work with a level of kind of coaching and helping them think metacognitively about their work that mirrors, in a way, what they're actually having their students do, the way they're working with their students to help them make good choices. And I love what you said about helping students stay in that kind of just right zone of challenge because... You know, as I think back to maybe some of the projects that I've seen where there was student choice or as a kid when I had a choice of what to work on, boy, do I write a paper? Do I do a report?

[10:20]

Do I do a presentation to the class or a video or a poster? You know, what do a lot of kids do is, you know, you kind of look at the different options and you pick whichever one's going to be easiest.

[10:28] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, that can be one of the challenges of giving choice is helping kids get into that zone. But it's also interesting. I've seen the reverse happen, which is that some kids in an effort to impress or because they think that, you know, the biggest book must mean that they're the best reader. They'll often choose things that are too hard as well. And so teaching kids the skill of how to figure out where their just right zone is, is one of the most important things we can do with choice. And that's another big theme that runs through this book, is it's not just about giving kids choice, it's about teaching kids choice.

[10:59] SPEAKER_01:

Teaching kids to choose what's going to make the biggest difference in their learning. Talk to me more about the criteria, because I love the example you gave of the math teacher kind of coaching students on making the choice that was going to put them in that zone, that was going to be the best for them, and not to just optimize for whatever they can get done the fastest or whatever they might naturally choose. But really... You know, transferring that ownership to them for making that choice, but then coaching them through it.

[11:28]

What are some of the criteria or the key points of guidance that teachers can give to students to help them make those choices productively?

[11:35] SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So I think the first step is that it's actually before we even present the choices to students is we have to make sure that we're offering meaningful, good choices to begin with. It was actually that math teacher who I was just talking about as we were working in a coaching session. He sort of looked up at me one point and said, you know, I just realized that giving kids four bad choices is actually worse than giving them no choice at all. Which I said, yeah, right on. So in the book, I outlined there are three criteria that we need to consider when we're thinking about whether or not choices are good.

[12:05]

The first is, do they connect with content? You know, we've got our learning objectives. We've got our standards. We've got our unit goals. The choices we offer had better connect with those. The second criteria is that they need to connect with our students.

[12:23]

with their developmental level. So they can need to connect with their students. And then the third criteria is that they have to make sense logistically. So if we have three or four days for a mini project, we can't offer choices that are gonna take two weeks. or we can't offer choices that involve us running around the school like crazy people looking for art supplies for an hour for a 20-minute word work option. So choices matching the learning goals, our students, and the logistics is one of the most important things we do right off the bat.

[12:57]

Another really key strategy is that when we offer students choice, we need to give them a little bit of time to think about the choices they're going to make and some criteria to consider as they're making their choice. So in the case of that math lesson, the teacher didn't just say, here are three different options, now go choose one. He actually said, here are the three options. He talked through each one, and then he had students turn into a quick partner chat with each other, and said, I want you to think about yourself as a learner, think about Where you're at with long division, turn and talk with a partner. Which of these three do you think might be a good fit for you? So he gave his students an opportunity to process and think a little bit before they made their choice.

[13:35]

And that's another really important idea is that a little bit of time spent at the beginning of choice, helping kids process and think through choices can pay big dividends later on as they get into their work.

[13:47] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Well, I love those criteria about connecting with content, connecting with students, and connecting with what makes sense logistically. And it does seem to me that if we are going to pose that to students, what you said earlier really rings true, that if we can't meet those criteria, if we can't provide choices that are meaningful and that make sense, we might as well not fake it and not try to force choice in just for the sake of choice.

[14:12] SPEAKER_02:

That's right. And the logistics one is it's one that some people find a little bit surprising. They didn't necessarily expect it when I share that with them. But I remember once I had done some work with some teachers in Montana and we'd done a lot of work on choice and I was coming back for a follow up visit and a sixth grade teacher who had been so excited about it. hadn't started yet. And so I asked her, what's up?

[14:33]

You know, you were so excited about getting going with choice. What's getting in your way? And she said, oh, you know, I just haven't had time to go to that store in town yet that has the pom pom balls and the glitter. And I thought, oh, no, you know, I think project based learning and hands on learning is fantastic. And that can be there can be great overlaps there with choice. But I think a misconception of choice is that it has to be project based or it has to be sort of project or art based.

[15:01]

And if we think of choice in those terms, logistically, it's not going to make sense a lot of the time. And then we're going to end up not giving kids choice when we could.

[15:10] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I think sometimes we kind of go to the extreme too. And I remember in the heyday of multiple intelligences, you know, sometimes there would be these choice projects that tried to hit every single one of the seven or eight or however many there were that year. You know, and these projects just got, you know, to be too much to plan. You know, there were too many options. So do you see a kind of a sweet spot, you know, a certain number where you feel like teachers are pretty consistently able to pull it off? Or is it very situation specific?

[15:40] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's really varied. You know, with short activities, if we're going to have students practice word wall words or practice balancing chemical equations, something that's going to take 20 or 30 minutes, then probably two or three or four choices is plenty. And more than that can just be a lot of noise. You know, we're just adding extra choices in and it just takes longer for students to choose and then they spend less time working. If we are talking about a big project, though, a five or six week unit, with a social studies or a science theme, then we might have a really wide open set of choices, or it might even be an open-ended choice where we're having students themselves brainstorm possibilities and then think about which ones are going to be a good fit. So it really is situational and depends on the learning goals and what we're hoping our students get out of the work.

[16:29] SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's talk about what happens after the choice, after the work takes place. Talk to me about the role that reflection plays, both for students and for teachers.

[16:38] SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's funny. Those are the last two steps of the kind of step-by-step process that I outline in the book. So we've got to create good choices. We've got to give students the opportunity to choose well. Then we facilitate choice while they're working. We're coaching.

[16:51]

We're helping them out. And then the last two steps are both about reflection. So the third step for students, after they've chosen and then they've done, is to review. They look back over their work, they think back over their choices, and they have an opportunity to reflect on what they did well, what could have been better. Did they make a good choice? Did it fit with their learning goal?

[17:12]

And that's one of the parts of choice that's so important because now we're helping students become better at self-assessing. We're working on some of their metacognitive skills. And this is what really helps them become better and better at making good, effective decisions about their learning in the future. And then the final step is that we as teachers think back over the activity or over the lesson or over the unit. And we reflect a little bit and say, what was it that went well? What could have been better?

[17:38]

Did the choices that I offered match the learning goals? You know, who chose what and what can I learn from that? And that's one of the ways that we'll deepen our own practice around choice.

[17:48] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Mike, this seems like an incredibly compelling addition to, you know, to any classroom to give students more choice, more control of their work. As a starting point, what are some of the kind of felt needs within schools or some of the problems that schools identify where they say to themselves, OK, we've got to do something about this. And then they they call you when they call you and say, Mike, come out and work with us. What is it that they're actually struggling with on a day to day basis, you know, prior to coming to more choice as the solution? What prompts them to pick up the phone?

[18:19] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so that's a really interesting question because oftentimes when I am contacted by school administrators, what they want me to do is come and work on effective and respectful discipline strategies. And that is one of the topics that I work with schools on. And so when I push a little bit and start to ask principals a little bit more about that, what I often hear is principals say, we're struggling with kids who've got some out of control behaviors, or we're struggling with daily discipline issues and it's getting in the way of learning. So when I hear that, a question that I have for principals is, tell me about the population of students who is most often melting down. Which kids are having a hard time holding it together? Which ones are losing control?

[19:03]

Which ones are being rude or disrespectful? And almost always what I hear is, is that it's students who are in special education, students who are in remedial programs. I mean, this is no surprise or shock to any administrator that oftentimes the kids who are struggling academically are also struggling with self-control and self-regulation. not exactly a, you know, an earth-shaking statement. But then I ask principals, tell me a little bit about the academic day of those students. What does it look like?

[19:32]

Are they getting power and control over their learning? Do they have choice about their work? Are they getting to do really cool projects? Are they getting the same kind of work that students who are in gifted and talented programs or students who are really academically successful are getting? And very often what I hear and it's what I see as I travel to schools throughout the country, is that the students who are most struggling academically end up doing less engaging, rote, boring work, often either by themselves or in a really small group or working with an adult. So it's in some ways the kids who most need autonomy and choice, the ones who most need to get fired up and tap into their self-motivation are having the least opportunity to really engage in meaningful work.

[20:19]

And so one of the things that I often end up doing in schools is helping them figure out how they can offer more choice and more power and control to students who often don't get it at all.

[20:29] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Mike, I appreciate the way you're looking at a problem that may manifest itself as discipline, may manifest itself as students demonstrating behavior problems or a lack of engagement, and really turning that to the question of what motivates students, what engages students in their work, and starting with choice as something that benefits not only the students who are maybe struggling to keep their behavior on track, but really that benefits all all students, so I definitely appreciate that. And I wonder what some of the takeaways or the translations that you found for adult learning are, because it seems to me that professional development, much like student learning, gets better when there's choice, when there's autonomy, when teachers have some control over their own professional learning versus just kind of sitting in a big session where everybody gets the same thing and nobody has any choice.

[21:20]

How have you seen that transfer over and play out?

[21:23] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, there's such interesting parallels here. So one thing I'll say is that when I first started teaching back in the early 90s, I was a fourth grade classroom teacher in Connecticut. It was back before No Child Left Behind had hit the fan and everybody was freaking out about standards and accountability and standardized tests. In some ways, I think a lot of teachers were giving a lot more choice to students than they are now. There were more hands-on projects going on. Kids had a lot more autonomy.

[21:50]

But I'm not sure that it was always focused on learning. I think sometimes teachers would do like a cool cooking project and say, well, there's math in there somewhere. I know kids are practicing math, but they weren't necessarily connecting it to the curriculum. And so then when the standardized testing movement hit, everybody kind of clamped down and got rid of those cool projects and eliminated a lot of choice because they had to work on the standards. I've seen the exact same thing happen with professional development. When I first began my career, I was given an amount of money every year that I could use however I wanted with professional development.

[22:22]

I could go to a conference, I could buy books, I could take a course, but it wasn't necessarily connected with school goals. Every teacher was just kind of forging their own PD plan. And that is also really flipped in the last 10 or 15 years. Most teachers don't have professional development discretionary funding anymore. Schools are doing school-wide professional development. And interestingly, I have seen a lot of really bad professional development out there where we try and give this one-size-fits-all approach where everybody's going to take the same workshop and are supposed to have the same outcomes.

[22:55]

And we know that good learning needs to be differentiated, whether we're talking about 5-year-olds, 15-year-olds, or 55-year-olds. So a lot of the work that I'm doing in schools is not just about helping teachers give kids more choice, but we've got to embed choice into the professional development itself. So in one school I was just working in in Western Massachusetts this year, I went in and did a series of small sort of mini workshop days with grade level teams where I would sit with grade levels throughout the day for about an hour each. And we used that as an opportunity to take in content. And I gave small amounts of choice within that, you know, choice of which article to read or choice of a way to process content that we were doing. But we were all working on kind of taking in the basic content of choice.

[23:39]

Then the school offered up the opportunity for teachers to opt in to be part of a leadership team who would do some really in-depth coaching and support and observations in each other's classrooms. And so I led that team of 10 teachers in a process where they coached and observed each other. And it was so powerful and amazing. And now that group next year is going to be leading professional development internally for their own school. And the school has come up with four options for teachers on how they're going to dig deeper with choice. They can do a book study and watch videos and read articles.

[24:17]

They can observe in each other's classrooms. They can do full observation and coaching cycles. Or they can create lessons to share in an online platform for the school. And what's really interesting is that as the teachers were given this choice, and it was put out there to the whole staff, the question that the administration was hearing, it wasn't, you know, like, do we have to do this? The big question they kept getting was, can we do more than one? So the staff itself is so energized.

[24:48]

And they're not just energized because they have choice. You know, if we'd had four bad choices, it wouldn't be any good. The reason they're energized is because those choices offer multiple learning opportunities so that teachers can find one that really fits what they need and what they want and how they best learn. So I think there are a lot of parallels between using choice well for self-differentiation with students and with staff. Absolutely.

[25:13] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Mike, thanks so much for joining us on Principal Center Radio to talk about learning to choose, choosing to learn. If people want to get in touch with you, find out more about your work or more about working with you, where can they find you online?

[25:25] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, thank you, Justin. This has been a really lovely conversation. I've really enjoyed it. The best way for people to get in touch with me is through my website, which is leadinggreatlearning.com. And through there, they can connect with me via email or phone or can connect with me on Twitter or Facebook.

[25:43]

So the website is probably the best place to go.

[25:46] SPEAKER_01:

All right, leadinggreatlearning.com. Well, again, Mike, it has been a thrill to speak with you today. I've had a lot of fun. And I just want to thank you for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[25:56] SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much, Justin. And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[26:02] SPEAKER_01:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Mike Anderson about choice in learning? One of my big takeaways is about the idea of both effectiveness and motivation. That if we teach students to think metacognitively, to monitor their own learning, and to make choices about what's going to be best for them, not only can we arrive at better choices because we're having the person who has the most information, the student, actually be involved in making that choice. And I know we're used to making those choices for students because we're the experts. We have the knowledge of the discipline, the knowledge of pedagogy. to make those choices for students.

[26:46]

But I think we often forget that students know themselves. And with a little bit of training, with a little bit of coaching, and with some guidance, students can be taught to make those choices for themselves more effectively so that they can practice the things they need practice on, so that they can demonstrate their learning in ways that are going to make the most sense for them. And I think all of this translates so well into professional development. If we think about some of the worst professional development we've ever sat through, often it is that kind of mandatory, we're doing a new initiative, we have to have this training from the state, where everybody is getting the same thing, there's no choice, there's no autonomy. And those conditions for motivation really disappear. And that is the second part.

[27:26]

In addition to effectiveness, I believe we're much more motivated when we have choice. Again, back to self-determination theory as we touched on just briefly. So I wanna challenge you as an instructional leader to build that choice in for your students, for the adults that you work with on a professional development basis. And make that a part of your plan to build in that choice to set up criteria, to set up guidance, to provide that guidance for students and for staff members to make those judicious choices about how they can best learn. And if you do want to work with Mike, talk to him about coming out to your school, get in touch with him at leadinggreatlearning.com.

[28:09] Announcer:

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