Recently I was a part of an introductory meeting for my district’s Aboriginal Enhancement Agreement Committee, and the theme: “how do we motivate our Aboriginal students?” came up again and again.
This theme assumes that this group of students are skills yes, motivation no. That is: they can do it, they just don’t want to. This puts us in the “motivation business.” Now we need to come up with a suite of motivational strategies to get them to be successful. We will create and apply incentives and punishments to motivate them to do what they need to do.
What if we are wrong? What if these learners are skills no, motivation yes? That is: they lack the skills to do it, so they can’t do it. Now our role just changed, we are now in the “problem solving business.” We can work with each individual to find out what the missing skill or unsolved problem is and get to work on fixing it. Once the student has the skills they will do well because they are already motivated to do well. This is collaborative problem solving, where we do things with students instead of doing things to them.
I’m a kids do well if they can guy. I believe that all people are motivated to do well. Nobody gets up in the morning and thinks to themselves “I want to do poorly today.” There is usually a lacking skill or unsolved problem that is getting in the way of people doing well. Our job is to work with the learner to dig down and find the unsolved problem and then get to work on fixing it, together.
If these ideas pique your interest, go to Ross Greene’s Lives in the Balance website for more information about kids do well if they can.
If you want them to learn, you have to make them think. 