These are my notes from John Nail’s presentation, “Necessary Accountability for Individual Learning” on February 20, 2012, at a Yukon Public Schools professional development day. John is on the school board of Yukon Public Schools and is a home developer in Yukon. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. John is publishing a book in summer 2012 with Tate Publishing.
Taught construction in the 2 year program at Canadian Valley Technology Center.
“How to get your students to do what they don’t want to do”
- some teachers today said 75% of their students don’t want to work
A self-directed learner
- has intrinsic motivation
- able to navigate their learning tasks independently
Goal Setting to help our students become intrinsically motivated and self-directed
Human engineering principles to help kids become self-directed
- teaching students construction at the tech center, I had a lot of tough kids who had dropped out or been kicked out of other programs
- I taught masonry: how to lay brick
- It was a living nightmare for me until I learned some of this human engineering principles
I guarantee you this goal sheet in front of you will produce a self-directed learner
Story of Wilma Rudolph, contracted polio as a child
- was home schooled initially as a child
- vowed she would walk
- won 3 gold medals at the Rome Olympics
What are external things we do / incentives we provide to try and help students work harder
- grades
- call parents
- suspension
- others
Not all those external things work for unmotivated students, for motivated students these may work
A few years ago a person watching me present this at Francis Tuttle Technolo
“I believe all students are at risk for not achieving their full potential”
Have you heard of Zig Ziglar”
- He says, “What the mind pictures, the body carries out”
- the challenge is changing that picture
What are pictures that some of your students bring into your class now?
- texting to friends
- talking with friends
- sleeping
We need to help students erase those pictures and replace them with something else
- key is erasing that picture and creating a new picture
What does our new picture look like?
- students listening
- bringing what they need to class
I have a finite amount of emotional energy to give to my students, so I want to set them up to utilize the things I have to offer them
This goal sheet
Book “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz
- paper and pencil starts the mind in motion
- when I start writing things down, things start to click
- when we write something down, we can’t think of something else except what we are writing
- “managed motion creates the proper emotion”
I have my students fill out the goal sheet at the start of the day
- I would have students write down their goal for that day the first moment they came into my classroom for the day
Benefits of writing down our goals
- focuses thinking
- we see pictures and images instead of words and phrases (this is also from David Schwartz)
it’s a fact that this will replace students’ pictures
- beautiful sermons about the importance of learning won’t change the picture in students’ heads….
- students must change this picture for themselves, but students must do this for themselves
- many of my students didn’t have very good writing skills either
So now, I would never walk into a classroom without that goal sheet
Your goal in some cases can become their goal through this process
- this goal sheet asks students to do some serious thinking: identifying obstacles, making a plan, self-reflection, etc.
Learning IS self-reflection
Writing it out creates the motivation we need, and it can create desire to do something
- it also creates ownership
- if you own something you embrace it differently
When students in my class wouldn’t follow my instructions and do a process correctly (and claimed they had followed my instructions fully) I bought a camcorder
- we would record video of a student doing a process
- then I would ask a student to write down the steps
- then they would review their video and self-evaluate
MY COMMENT: HERE IS A KEY FOR THE METHOD JOHN IS DESCRIBING – HE IS HELPING STUDENTS PERFORM TASKS AND DO SPECIFIC, HANDS-ON THINGS. THAT CONCRETE, PRACTICAL SIDE OF WHAT HE WAS TEACHING IS KEY I THINK. WE NEED TO FIND WAYS TO MAKE OUR LEARNING ACTIVITIES MORE HANDS-ON, PRACTICAL, AND PRODUCT AND/OR PERFORMANCE BASED.
True learning is self reflection, and self-evaluation plays a key role in that
How can a leader provide the proper atmosphere
“The primary challenge of coaching in the NFL can be boiled down to a 1 sentence description: “Getting people to do what they don’t want to do in order to active what they want to achieve is a pretty good description of any kind of leadership.”
Many students simply don’t know how or have never been taught how to motivate themselves
Frederick Herzberg defined motivation as movement; “motivation is what happens when people charge their own batteries”
When I was trying to charge my students’ batteries as a teacher, that didn’t work very well for me
My goal is to have self-motivated, self-directed learners
Let’s go back to students not bringing the right tool to class: the pencil
Helen Keller: “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Take a right turn to Success
- Choices —> Crossroads
- door #1: Circle of the Unknown (bad attitude, inappropriate behavior, incomplete knowledge, no desire, lack of skill) – I originally called this “The Loser’s Circle” but others
- door #2: Winner’s Circle: Skill, Desire, Behavior, Attitude, Knowledge
It all boils down to CHOICES
- I found a book by Shad Helmstetter, PhD, called “Life Choices: Manage Your Choices, Manage Your Life”
“The self-talk you create helps manage the choices you make”
How does this change my behavior as a student when I say to myself:
- I’m a poor student
- I’m a good student
- I’m a great student
pyramid is: Choices, Programs, Self-Talk
What I say to myself determine how I’m programmed and how I talk to myself
I taught my students to say out loud: “I always bring a pencil to class.”
- I had students not bringing pencils to class, talking when I was talking, coming late…
I had a turning point when students set off a stink bomb in my class when a high powered developer was coming to my class as a guest speaker
Book recc: “What to Say When You Talk to Yourself” by Shad Helmstetter
- you say these phrases in the present tense, as if you possess these skills TODAY
- when students write things down and say them out loud, it works to reprogram their thinking
Some people say up to 75% of what we say to ourselves is negative
- course material we’re presenting to kids is new and requires our brains to strain
- we forget learning something new is tough
- we’ve got to help them in a mechanical way
- AND give kids some BELIEF
So now YOU are going to make a choice today
- 75% of your kids are not motivated
- your choice is whether you are going to implement these ideas today
- just like your students that make plenty of choices, you will make choices
I challenge you to use the goal setting method with your students now
- I know how effective this is in the classroom because I lived this for 10 years
Technorati Tags: change, education, evaluation, literacy, goals, motivation, students, pictures, john, nail, johnnail, reflection, reform
On this day..
- Open Registration for Storychaser Spring 2011 Workshops in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas - 2011
- Panoramic Fieldhouse Photos in Manhattan, Kansas and Norman, Oklahoma - 2010
- Podcast340: On board the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus in Yukon, Oklahoma (interview with Ryan L’Esperance) - 2010
- Communicating In The Digital Age (SlideShare Slidecast) - 2010
- Our rock stars aren't like your rock stars - 2010
- Podcast339: Communicating in the Digital Age (Presentation for Pioneer Library System Librarians) - 2010
- Why Celebrate Oklahoma Voices Matters - 2008
- Podcast132: The Context and Opportunities of 1:1 Learning - 2007
- Podcast131: Electronic Response Systems from Turning Point Technologies - 2007
- Blue Web'n Yahoo Group - 2007
