[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Baeder. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:12] Justin Baeder:
I'm your host, Justin Baeder, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program Steve Reifman. Steve has been an elementary school teacher for the past 30 years. 31 years, and during that time he's earned national board certification, traveled to Japan as a Fulbright Memorial Fund scholar, and completed two master's degrees. He has experience working with students in all the elementary grade levels and he's taught in both public and private schools. He's the author of several books for educators, such as The Complete Guide for New Elementary Teachers, Discover Joy and Success with a Whole Child Approach, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:46] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:49] Justin Baeder:
Steve, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.
[00:51] Steve Reifman:
Justin, thank you. Pleasure to be here.
[00:53] Justin Baeder:
Well, excited to speak with you. I think it's been more than a decade since your first appearances on Principal Center Radio. If memory serves, this is your third, and you've got a new book called The Complete Guide for New Elementary Teachers. Set that up for us a little bit. Talk to us about what need you saw for this book and what you aimed to accomplish with it.
[01:10] Steve Reifman:
I've done a few other books that focus on teaching the whole child. It's always been important to me to have an approach that values the pursuit of academic excellence, but also gives equal weight to issues of character, work habits, social skills, and health and wellness. And I think the best way to do that is to blend them together into a seamless whole as best we can. And after the pandemic, I took a two year leave of absence. And during that time, I had an idea for what I felt could be like my final book for classroom teachers. And I wanted to serve as a career capstone and help the next generation of teachers and pay it forward.
[01:50]
just show a lot of appreciation and gratitude for everybody who helped me along the way, and I wanted to do the same. So I thought it would be great to focus on new teachers, to have an impact on those just entering the profession, to help them get off to a great start. Because there's so many practices that exist in education that are great for kids, and they're effective. And then there's some that I feel that are not, and we're not doing as well as we can be. So I wanted to put it together into one comprehensive resource that could help new teachers, but I think it could benefit teachers who've been teaching for a long time as well. I do think it brings some ideas that are not typically given a lot of attention in education circles.
[02:33] Justin Baeder:
Absolutely. I was going to mention, some of these topics will of course be familiar like building a classroom culture and establishing routines and procedures and communicating with parents. You talk about W. Edwards Deming's approach to quality and you talk about introducing your class to continuous improvement. Talk to us about some of those ideas that traditionally would not be on the minds of elementary teachers, but are a big part of your world.
[02:55] Steve Reifman:
Sure. I got incredibly lucky during my first year of teaching because in my teacher training program, which was wonderful, and I did feel well prepared, but there were a few areas where I did not feel as well prepared. And during my first year, like many young teachers, I took a graduate class to learn new things and move up on the pay scale. And one evening, a principal from my district At the very end of his presentation, like while everybody was packing up their stuff and heading to the door, he gave some book recommendations. And one of them was William Glasser's The Quality School. And that set off this wonderful chain reaction because through Glasser, I learned of W. Edwards Deming, who...
[03:37]
was in industry he is best known for going to japan after world war ii to helping business leaders rebuild japan the japan's industrial base after the devastation of the war and he developed what were later named the 14 points of quality and even though he was writing for an audience of business leaders i felt that everything he was saying applied to me so when i would read his books I highlighted way too much. They say you're only supposed to highlight the very important things. I was highlighting paragraph after paragraph, page after page. And even though he was talking about the relationship of managers and workers, I felt that held very true for the relationship of teachers and students. coming together with a sense of purpose. And that's an area that I feel like I can add to the conversation because it's not something I hear talked about a lot, like the importance of working together with students at the beginning of each school year to establish a sense of purpose so the kids know why we're in school.
[04:38]
Like, what are we doing? Why does this matter? How does this help us now and later? So I got that from Deming, but also the right of people to have joy and satisfaction and take pride in their work and work together, as I said, toward common purpose in a way that just brings out the best in everybody. So that got me started. And then that book led me to others that rounded out the approach that I was building over the years.
[05:05]
So you mentioned continuous improvement. That works on the level of both the class as a whole, but also individual improvement. And we hear a lot about the growth mindset these days, which is wonderful. So one of the biggest roles of teachers is to quote, unquote, coach them up. That's what you hear in sports all the time, Whatever entry point students take with their learning, we meet them there and we make that full day-to-day effort to help them improve and help them value the small steps along the way and focus on quality because I really do think that that is the rising tide that lifts all boats. When we learn how to define quality, when we create the conditions where quality can thrive in the classroom, then kids...
[05:49]
who have tremendous intrinsic motivation that just grows because one of the like the biggest issues that i see in education now and you mentioned motivation is the reliance in many many places that i've seen if not most the reliance on extrinsic motivation to basically control kids to basically get them to behave and put forth effort And there are so many problems with that practice. Instead, I believe we need to focus on one that values intrinsic motivation because all students have it, and it's the responsibility of teachers and schools to bring it out of them and foster it so that the kids improve because they want to improve and they succeed in school because they value it, they see the purposes, they find meaning, and they work hard so that they can grow and reach their amazing potential.
[06:39] Justin Baeder:
Well, Steve, one of the stories you tell in the book is teaching an extension class for elementary teachers at UCLA and presenting your views on intrinsic motivation and the power of intrinsic motivation and some of the pitfalls of extrinsic motivation and just the look of horror that came over people's faces as you described what's wrong with extrinsic motivation. Take us into that a little bit. Where does extrinsic motivation cause problems for us in the classroom?
[07:06] Steve Reifman:
Sure, and I'll start at the very beginning. When I was a student teacher, I had the wonderful privilege of doing one of my student teaching placements at my own elementary school. And one or two weeks into my time in a fifth grade class, I was there after school, and there was one student who was still there and asked if he would help me clean up a little bit. And he looked me right in the eye and he said, what do you give me for it? And then I realized that when somebody is used to being in a classroom that is managed with extrinsic motivation, that becomes the focus. You do things because of what it's going to get you rather than out of a sense of teamwork and wanting to be part of a group and help out that group.
[07:50]
And right at that time, during my graduate program, we were starting to talk about classroom management. And the facility of my coordinator started out by saying there are different ways of doing it. One way is based on extrinsic motivation, theory of behaviorism, rewards and punishments. There are also approaches based on clear expectations and routines and procedures. Now, naturally, that second one appealed to me much more, but we didn't really talk about that very much. Like 99% of what we learned was about how to administer rewards and punishments.
[08:22]
It was never why. It was always assumed that that was the way to go. And then once my classmates and I started our student teaching, we would visit schools. It was everywhere. Like you walk into any classroom, there were table points and marble jars and prize boxes, which to me seemed nothing more like trying to control kids with little bribes. I know that's a strong statement, but that's how I felt then, and that's how I have always felt.
[08:45]
So one of the books that I was lucky enough to read in my early part of my career was Punished by Rewards by Alfie Cohen. And he goes into tremendous detail about several significant problems with rewards. And just in a nutshell, they actually punish Even though we think of rewards as avoiding punishments, in a couple ways they actually have the same effects as punishments. They can affect the relationships among the students and between the students and the teacher. Rewards can ignore reasons why things are happening rather than dealing with them at the root cause and trying to come up with other more meaningful solutions. Rewards can discourage risk taking.
[09:24]
And then I think the biggest one is that rewards can take away interest in activities that people would otherwise find. Like one thing that I read that really scared me was the reading programs that many schools have. Like at my school, we have an annual read-a-thon, which is a noble effort. and i just commend and thank everybody who's involved in it but when there are prizes attached to the amount of reading that kids do the kids will do more reading in the short term because they get excited about their prizes but once the readathons end and they're no longer filling out the reading calendars or turning in the sheets The amount of reading does not go back down to what it was before. It goes back down to less than it was before. So we're really having, it's counterintuitive.
[10:09]
We're having a way different effect on the student's reading than we think we are. And that's what rewards feature. There are a lot of unintended consequences that counter, in many cases, thwart a lot of the ideals that schools are trying to promote. So...
[10:27]
After my grad school experiences and that interaction with that student, I began what became a career-long quest to find a different approach that was rooted in intrinsic motivation and built around that so that we would avoid the situations in classrooms where we're controlling kids with little bribes in ways that really do not serve them well and in many cases can destroy a lot of the things that we are trying to promote.
[10:56] Justin Baeder:
I think part of the appeal of extrinsic motivators like rewards and consequences and things like that is that they are things that we can tangibly do, right? Like I can say, hey, everybody sit down and listen and I'll give you candy. Like that works. You can walk into any classroom and kids like candy enough and don't care that much about what they're doing instead of that, that it works in the short term. And it is something that we can directly do. And I feel like the timescale with intrinsic motivation is different, but also the direct doability, if that's a word, is different for intrinsic motivation.
[11:32]
So how do you describe the teacher actions of creating intrinsic motivation? Because I don't feel like it's something where we can just kind of pull a lever in the same way and create intrinsic motivation the way I can create extrinsic motivation by giving out candy. Help us understand that.
[11:49] Steve Reifman:
Yeah, first of all, that was incredibly well said. I appreciate the question. And at their best, extrinsic motivators produce temporary obedience. And they don't always even do that. And it is a much more long-term, comprehensive approach required to build a classroom that's on a foundation of intrinsic motivation. So at the very beginning of the year, it's super important for teachers to establish a sense of purpose so kids know why they're in school and how it's going to help them in the short term and long term and help those around them.
[12:24]
One of the things that I read early on in my career was a... was two sets of theories or two sets of assumptions by a man named Douglas MacGregor in the 1960s developed Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X basically says that people do not like work, will avoid it if they can, and need to be coerced or directed if they're going to put forth effort. Theory-wise is the opposite, that the expenditure of effort is as natural as play and people will put forth effort and people will commit themselves to the objectives of an organization when they believe in those objectives and they feel like they are part of something larger than themselves.
[13:03]
So, as classroom teachers, we can facilitate that by helping the kids understand what the larger purposes of education are. We can discuss with them what those objectives are so that they will be willing in effort to contribute to that effort where they will invest their hearts and minds in a classroom where the teachers are investing their hearts and minds and asking the kids to do the same. So the single best teaching idea that I can recommend, and this has been true for like close to 25 years or even longer when I started doing this, this comes from Stephen Covey who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and other amazing books. He talked about the importance of a mission statement. So every year during the first full week of school, my students and I would collaborate on a class mission statement. That becomes our reference point that we use throughout the year.
[13:56]
The mission statement talks about who we are, what we want to accomplish together, the type of class that we want to be. And that's a four-day process where I start by asking the kids some very basic questions that rarely get discussed, like why are we here, why does learning matter, what kind of things we want to accomplish together, etc. Then on the next two days, I share with them examples of mission statements from restaurants, theme parks, companies, other organizations that they heard of and that they probably love and they're so excited to see it. in their classroom. So we read them together, we highlight, we brainstorm words and ideas that resonate with them. And then on the last day, everybody has an opportunity to write basically their own mission statement that they would recommend to the class.
[14:43]
Kids who might not feel ready to do an entire mission statement are welcome to do individual words. They could do phrases, they could do sentences, or they could try to write one or more paragraphs. So then I take all that home over the weekend, I put it all together, and that becomes the first draft of our mission statement, which I enlarge, laminate, I present to the kids. And when that happens, something magical occurs where everybody in the room can look at it and see some of their work represented in the mission statement. Like it's super important that we include something from everybody. And then we look at it once a week as part of our morning routine.
[15:17]
So those ideas remain living ideas that guide us throughout the year. If something's going well in math class one day, then at the end of the period before recess, I can call everybody up. Yes, we'll review the math, but I can also focus on whatever in the mission statement connected to what they did well. Maybe it was cooperating with their partners. I can connect that to anything we have in the mission statement about that. So that keeps the ideas to life and it serves to inspire them because it shows that great things are happening because they have committed to important things and they're bringing it to life.
[15:49]
On the other hand, if something is not going well, I can use the mission statement to hold us accountable. This is what we said we want to do. This isn't happening. What can we do to improve next time? So we enlist their ideas and their ownership so that we're all a part of of bringing to life the ideas that we ourselves wrote. So that absolutely does take time.
[16:12]
It is much more involved and probably harder than issuing a reward. But that combined with a strong emphasis during the first four to six weeks of the school year on training, just like the NFL teams before the season starts have a training camp where expectations are set and clarified and routines and procedures are practiced. That's what we do in the classroom. And as we do that, it's super important for the kids to know that we're setting the bar high. Because without rewards and punishments, one thing that somebody said in that UCL extension class, they characterized this approach as a soft approach. Because if we're not gonna reward, what are we gonna do?
[16:56]
It's like we're taking away the tools that teachers rely on. So what are we gonna have instead? So establishing a purpose with a mission statement goes a long way. It's about having a training camp so the kids know what the expectations are, how routines and procedures are to be completed in class. Those are practiced, rehearsed, clarified, and then we hold the kids accountable. So there's really nothing soft about the approach, but it's not going to an extrinsic place.
[17:23]
It's from an intrinsic place. There are others as well, but those are the basic requirements. parts there are other efforts meant to engage and inspire and build teamwork and build culture so that the kids like don't want to rock the boat because they help build the boat like it's their boat and that together we're going places in that boat so i think that's like that's a big part of the answer but there's certainly other ingredients as well
[17:48] Justin Baeder:
And to get back to some of your references to Glasser earlier, all of this is toward the end of quality work. That intrinsic motivation and that mission statement are leading to the students taking responsibility for quality work. Talk to us a little bit about how you develop that commitment in students to quality, how you teach about quality, and what you see as students take that ownership of quality.
[18:15] Steve Reifman:
Sure. Many times quality is defined in terms of goodness. Like that's a quality piece of work because it's excellent. One thing I read earlier in my career was by a man named Philip Crosby, who's another quality expert. He says that any definitions of quality that rely on goodness are basically meaningless because everybody has their own idea of what goodness means. So instead, he says that quality needs to be defined as conformance to requirements, meaning that that whatever a piece of work is supposed to have, if that work has it, then it could be considered quality work.
[18:48]
If it doesn't, then it's not yet quality work. The idea being that we can always go back and improve it. It's never a one-shot deal if we're focusing on some type of meaningful project. So there are many different ways to bring it to life. The one that I read first is a quality cupcake. Now, I tend not to focus on, like, sweets or desserts because I do want to promote health and wellness, and I take that seriously.
[19:13]
But just as a fun example, if you were asking kids what makes a quality cupcake, we would come up with a small list of requirements. And if a cupcake meets all of those, then it would be, and if it doesn't, then it wouldn't be. So once the kids understand that, something needs to fulfill a small number of requirements, then we can carry that conversation into our work. If we're doing a math problem-solving activity, what would a quality piece of work look like? We identified the question, we identified important facts, we chose a strategy, we executed that strategy, we labeled our answer, and we checked our work, and you have a correct answer. So if you do all of that, I think we can all agree that that would be a quality piece of math work.
[19:59]
Now, everybody isn't going to agree on every criterion, but we can come together and come up with an understanding of what quality work is. So defining quality is the most important thing because once we have a clear definition of it, then we can make sure that we are creating the conditions where quality can occur. One of the best ways to do that, and this is an advantage that veteran teachers have in that new teachers just, we figure it out as we go and we ask members of our grade level team, we find other members you know people on our staff who can help us maybe we find things online but the importance of having models and anchor papers that we can show kids and have them decide for themselves do you feel like this piece of work matches the requirements that we set or not And then a big part of that is also having rubrics or check sheets or scoring systems that the kids would go through so that they're basically doing what teachers have always done by themselves.
[20:59]
They would have a chance to use a rubric or a different type of scoring system. to assess for themselves or with partners or small groups. Does this piece of work represent quality? If so, why? If not, why not? So that they're a part of the conversation and they have a really strong understanding of what they're trying to do.
[21:17]
The other great thing about having models and anchor papers is that I've never known a student who has looked at one of those and said, I can't do that. When you see it in front of you, it's like, oh, I could do that. So it builds confidence and the kids put forth their best effort. They're usually not intimidated or like dissuade from giving their best effort. So that's a big part of it. Again, there are other parts of that as well.
[21:41]
But defining quality, showing examples of quality, and creating the conditions where it can flourish are critical.
[21:49] Justin Baeder:
And so much of, I think, what has always shown up in your work is that kind of clear theory of action for the conditions that students need to be intrinsically motivated to do quality work, to contribute to the definition of quality work, and writing those rubrics, as you said. Such great conditions for hard work and intrinsic motivation. And I wonder if I could get your opinion on maybe the state of the profession overall, and perhaps the state of elementary education in particular, because one thing that really stands out to me about your work is that you don't seem to get distracted by stuff that's cute or sounds nice. And I don't know if this has been your experience, but I just see so much distraction coming from, oh, that's a cute activity or, oh, that's a cute thing. not really thinking about what do we want to actually happen for our kids.
[22:40] Steve Reifman:
One thing I share, and it's along these lines, is that at the beginning of the school year, especially when we're new, we don't want the kids walking into an empty classroom. So there's many times the desire to find really interesting posters. We want to make things colorful. And when the kids walk in, we want it to be bright and vibrant. And I endorse all of that. But I think it's better to come in with...
[23:08]
either empty or close to empty walls so that we can build things together and we can still make it colorful and appealing. There's certainly no reason why we can't do that. But the activities that we do on our first few days are not simply fun activities. to do with kids even though you know i love a good icebreaker as much as anybody but if we can be very purposeful and what we do then the activities that the kids are doing right away all connect to a larger aspect of our culture that we're trying to promote so for example One is the play-doh activity which we do the first hour of the first day of school. I learned about this at a teaching workshop that I went to where when the kids walk in they see a plate and a small can of play-doh on every desk and they have some time to make something that represents themselves somehow and we encourage them to be very creative because that's part of the culture that I want to create.
[24:05]
that it's not the teacher giving all the answers the teachers not the be all end all like we all have so much knowledge we all have a lot to share the most important things we learn in class will probably come from other students as much as they will come from teachers books and internet resources so they they will make a creation they'll have a chance to share it one at a time we'll go around the room it's a nice chance for the kids to learn each other's names and then i take a picture on my phone of everybody holding up their their their play-doh creation at the end and then if you make a bulletin board out of that like that's really cool it's colorful and it's a reference point that reminds us about the importance of creativity so if everything connects to a larger idea whether it is health and wellness or kindness or many many others we can do something and still achieve that same aim without just doing something because it is appealing but otherwise perhaps empty
[25:02] Justin Baeder:
Well, Steve, we've talked about intrinsic motivation. We've talked about quality. What can teachers do to create an empowering learning environment? And what does empowerment mean for your students?
[25:13] Steve Reifman:
So empowerment is such an incredibly important topic because I believe it connects directly to intrinsic motivation. When teachers value that type of motivation, we believe that every student has greatness inside of them, that they have the motivation and the ability to make a difference in their classrooms, in their schools, and in their communities. And in order to bring that out and help maximize kids abilities we want to create an environment that empowers them that means we don't do things for them that they can do for themselves we give them meaningful opportunities to make decisions about their learning and take it as far as they can go sometimes it means choosing their topics or choosing the ways that they want to complete their work sometimes it means encouraging them to take on projects that maybe will do at school but maybe they'll do at home and That's one of the most exciting things that I think teachers can see in the classroom when kids come to school and show something that they did at home because they wanted to, not because it was a school assignment or because somebody made them, but because they had that desire to do something.
[26:17]
And if they keep that up, and become lifelong learners and lifelong creators. Who knows where that may lead them? Maybe to wonderful hobbies in their life, but maybe a profession, who knows? Especially these days when there's so much new and what we focus on as far as like what we think of as career paths, At one point in time, we see that it's completely different just a small number of years later. We don't know what the future holds, but we know the kinds of things that will help kids be successful. And one of them is helping them build strong character, helping them build work habits and social skills and the ability to think and reason and be creative.
[26:55]
If we can empower them to do those things in our classroom, then we are really doing them a great service and setting them up to be successful for a long time.
[27:04] Justin Baeder:
Beautifully said, what we all want for our students. So the book is The Complete Guide for New Elementary Teachers. Discover joy and success with a whole child approach. Steve Riefman, if people want to find you online, where's the best place for them to go?
[27:19] Steve Reifman:
I do have a website, steveriefman.com. I put a lot on there many years ago. I have not really done much in recent years, but there's still a lot on there that would show YouTube videos that I have done, teaching tips and strategies, other books and eBooks and resources that I've done. that would be a good start. Amazon is also great if you just type in my name, Teachers Pay Teachers.
[27:43]
I have a lot of smaller, shorter resources that address very specific aspects of teaching the whole job. I think that might benefit new teachers because sometimes we're looking for very specific things as part of our teaching. So I think those would be promising starting points.
[28:00] Justin Baeder:
Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining me once again on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. Justin, thank you.
[28:06] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com.
