“What can we do to motivate our students who need it the most?” my principal recently asked. 

As a teacher, I, of course, had many thoughts. But those thoughts are just that: mine. So I asked my principal a simple question: Why don’t we ask the students?

So we did.

By Chase Mielke

We sat down with a group of sophomores—a majority of whom are in the bottom three percent of the class academically. We told the students to be completely open and honest. Nothing they shared would have a negative influence on our treatment or evaluation of them. They were given a few days to think about factors that affect their motivation in school.

What we had intended to be a quick conversation sparked a deep discussion consuming the whole 70-minute period. Many themes arose—themes worth sharing with you because change begins with understanding. The most common motivation killers according to our students are:

1. Bombing a Big Test

We all know that there are students who show understanding of content and work hard on assignments, only to bomb tests because of cognitive challenges, stress, or any other host of “test-taking factors.” More than a few students said things like, “I hate how I can be doing well on all my assignments and projects, then fail a test, and all of a sudden I’m failing the class.”

For a struggling student, falling into a pit with a low grade—without systems to recover—is a recipe for learned helplessness. Many students remarked how frustrating it was to struggle in a class and reach a point where their efforts wouldn’t matter.

2. No Opportunities to Revise

Surprisingly, students weren’t griping for those final-week extra-credit chances to inflate grades. They wanted chances to revise tests, essays, and assignments throughout a class. They wanted the chance to turn things in late—even with penalties. In short, they simply wanted a chance.

My realization here was how much grading practices can contribute to learned helplessness. It makes sense: If I don’t feel like my effort will be enough to help me pull myself out of a failure pit, then what’s the point? As a teacher, then, I must consider what opportunities I can provide that shift students back into an internal locus of control.

3. Too Much Lecturing

Students frequently mentioned how often their teachers talk—sometimes the whole class period. They stressed how hard it is to stay motivated when they just sit and listen.

One of the most common suggestions students gave for boosting motivation was hands-on opportunities. They acknowledged that not every lesson can involve a lab or project. But they said they’d at least like to be able to talk about and share their ideas or practice on their own more often.

4. Poor Understanding

Students lose motivation when they don’t understand. Seems like a no-brainer. But the learning here is that teachers aren’t intentionally trying to destroy student understanding. Just the opposite was true: Teachers were trying to help students “get” it, but the understanding was lost in translation. Among the most common comments were:

“I hate when I ask teachers to explain something again, and they say, ‘Weren’t you paying attention!?’ They assumed I was being lazy, but I really was trying. It just didn’t make sense.”

“I can’t stand when I say something doesn’t make sense, and the teacher explains it exactly the same way they did the first time. After they keep doing that, I don’t even bother asking.”

The lesson here? Get more feedback from students and be conscious of knowledge gaps. I ask for feedback regularly on my ability to explain concepts and ask students what they do understand before trying to reteach—next time in a different way.

5. Boring Content

Relevance, relevance, relevance. A major factor in student motivation was feeling like the content was either not useful or too challenging. This is nothing new to teachers: We all have students who ask, “What’s the point of this?” Yet the answer we give is important. Students commented that saying they’ll need to learn something for college or the next class is more annoying than helpful. They want relevance now as well as in the future. They want it to be relevant to their lives, not relevant to our lives.

In addition to the relevance concern is the scaffolding concern. As an ELA teacher, I asked my class what percentage of the content we read is interesting to them. The average? Ten percent. I then followed up by asking what percentage of the content we read was too difficult to understand independently. The average? Eighty-five percent. Imagine the effect on motivation when the content is both dreadfully boring and dreadfully challenging.

The lesson? I needed to ask some tough questions about my content. Yes, there are things beyond my control that I must teach, but I must look at what I can control and work from there. For example, it’s easy to get frustrated and angry when kids don’t come in the next day having completed their reading homework. But do I really expect them to trudge through something that is boring and beyond their ability at home? Can I do a better job of coaching their reading in class and finding resources that are more relevant? Yes. We cannot fear change.

6. Lack of Respect for Kids

This was the most discussed topic because it really hurts student motivation. Over and over, students described how much a respectful environment affected their willingness to work hard and learn. The frustration could be summed up in one student’s statement:

“They expect us to act like adults but treat us like children.”

Now, I take pride in working with amazing teachers. So my biggest shock came from a survey my principal gave the class. He asked two questions:

• Of the teachers you’ve had in this school, what percentage do you think likes their job?

• Of the teachers you’ve had in this school, what percentage do you think likes kids?  

To any teacher, these answers would be frustrating. We could point to any number of justifications for why students might feel this way, such as, “Kids today think they deserve respect rather than having to earn it first.” As I’ve heard before, though, blaming and justifying are like rocking chairs: They give us something to do, but they don’t get us anywhere.

So what do we do? I again return to the value of surveying student perceptions often and getting consistent, honest feedback. Just as no quality teacher is intentionally trying to teach content poorly, no quality teacher is trying to disrespect students. There is simply a miscommunication.

At the end of our discussion, I had more questions than answers. There were still so many things I wanted to know about each student’s motivation. But to get there, the process of understanding has to start with me.