The excerpt below is from the book “Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom,” by Esther Wojcicki, Lance Izumi and Alicia Chang. This excerpt is from the chapter entitled “Trick in the Blended Classroom,” written by Wojcicki.

It all started in 1987, when I got a grant from the State of California. The state sent me eight Macintosh computers, never asking if I knew how to use them, and when they arrived I had no idea how to even turn them on. I realized then that I was going to fail if I didn’t get some help quickly. I looked around for colleagues who could help, but none of them had any idea. Our school had no IT department. So I took a leap of faith and confessed to my students that I had no idea how to use the new computers and that I needed help. This turned out to be a stroke of good luck, even though I did not see it that way at the time. It was the beginning of my new teaching methodology.

The students were absolutely thrilled to help me (can you imagine being asked to help a teacher?!), and that was the beginning of my collaborative teaching model. Only, at that point, it did not have a name, and in fact I had to hide it from other teachers who might have frowned on what I was doing. The students and I ended up spending hours after school and on weekends figuring out the computers and how to network them. I had never even heard the word “network” in a computer context. I was one of the first teachers in California to use computers in the classroom, and possibly the first in the nation to use computers in a journalism classroom.

I was soon sold on the idea of collaboration, respect, and trust in the classroom. And it turns out that building a culture of collaboration, respect, and trust is key to a successful blended classroom. The first action a teacher needs to take in the fall when school starts is to set up the culture. On the surface, this may sound like a waste of time, but in fact its importance cannot be overemphasized. Part of such a culture is understanding that the teacher is not the only expert in the room; in fact, students can know more than the teacher about some aspects of what they will be doing together.

Computers, tablets, and other electronic devices alone are not going to change the classroom. It is the change in culture that will make the difference.

To help everyone remember what it takes to set up a culture that works, I have come up with an acronym, TRICK. Each letter stands for an important part of the culture.

T = trust
 R = respect 
I = independence C = collaboration K = kindness

Trust The first thing to establish in the classroom is a culture of trust. That does not mean the students are given complete freedom to run wild and do what they want; it means the students trust each other to help in the learning process and the teacher trusts the students. The boundaries need to be established early in the semester. There are a variety of exercises to build trust that a teacher can use, ranging from the blind man’s game to walking into walls.

Since the teacher is the one in control, it is he or she who must take the initiative. Teachers need to put themselves into situations that require students to be trustworthy. Opportunities arise every day. For example, having students work in teams and be responsible to the team teaches trust. Creating a group blog or website gives students a natural way to develop trust in the team, and, if the teacher trusts the team, it builds a community of trust in the classroom.

However, the key to building trust is to actually trust the students. While that may seem counterintuitive to many teachers, it is really the only way to effectively build trust. For example, in my advanced journalism class, the students each have an individual story assignment, so no two students are doing the same thing. Some of the stories are particularly sensitive about issues in the school, the district, or the city. It takes a leap of faith on my part to trust students to get the information right and to write it up in an objective way. We publish the results online— typically garnering thousands of views—and in hard copy for three thousand local residents. Students have told me that trusting them to write the stories is significant in building their self-esteem.

The students also put out a newspaper or magazine. The newspaper class has an enrollment of seventy students, who work in teams on the paper. Six editors-in-chief are in charge of the class, giving the students critical leadership experience and a sense of control over the publication. The magazine classes have an enrollment of thirty-five and an editorial board of three editors. Each student in each class has a title that correlates to his or her responsibilities. Examples are news editor, editorial-page editor, feature-page editor, or reporter.

Besides having the students produce actual publications, a second suggestion is to allow the students to teach the class on a regular basis. For example, the teacher can designate one day a week when the kids take over the class for an hour or so. Having kids teach each other in small groups on a regular basis also creates a sense of trust in the class.

I also encourage the students to help with the technological side of the program. I use Google Docs to create documents and Adobe software to publish. New products come out daily, and many of those might be useful for me, but I have little time to investigate them. Thus, I ask my students to watch out for new software that might be useful for the program, tell me about it, and, if it seems appropriate, learn how to use it. They then share it with the rest of the class.

A third suggestion to enhance trust is to give students your home phone number, cell number, and e-mail and tell them to contact you when they have problems, but not later than a specified time in the evening. Just giving out that information provides for a culture of trust and caring. All students also have the same contact information for all other students including home phones, cell phones and addresses as well as my contact information.

A fourth suggestion is for the teacher to laugh at his or her own mistakes on a regular basis. We all make mistakes, and teaching students that mistakes are part of life is an important lesson in helping them accept themselves. I do that every day in class, and the mistakes are not difficult to find: Every day there is something that does not go as planned. Teachers who are willing to show that they are not perfect, don’t know everything, and can laugh at themselves can more easily develop trust.

Finally, and perhaps most important, is to put students in situations requiring them to think for themselves. They may stumble and have difficulties, but the key is to support them in their efforts while letting them solve the problem themselves. This builds trust in themselves, in the class as a whole, and between teacher and students.

Respect Teachers need to have sincere respect for their students, especially in today’s world, where the members of a class may come from very different backgrounds and experiences. But each one has unique gifts even if he or she also has unique problems. As a teacher I know how difficult it can be to respect students who create problems in the classroom, but it is up to the teacher to show respect. It goes a long way in making the student feel better about themselves.

Respect is part of trust. I trust the kids and respect them, and in turn they trust and respect me. Someone has to start the process, and it cannot be the students, since the teacher is in charge.

Giving students respect does not mean letting go of expectations. In fact, it means the opposite.

Teachers need to respect them as individuals and expect them to achieve at a high level. My expectations are high and I encourage my students to reach those standards by giving them the opportunity to revise their work on a regular basis. I use the mastery system model (which means students work on a skill until they master it) and grade only when students have finally mastered the standard. An innovative internet company called MasteryConnect.com has software that sup- ports this pedagogy. Grades can be very discouraging for kids but if teachers return an assignment with suggestions on how to improve or correct the errors and kids understand it is part of the process of learning, they will still be excited to learn.

Famed psychologists Albert Bandura talks about the power of self-efficacy and how a student’s self image determines how they feel about themselves. He defines self-efficacy as a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations and says that self efficacy plays a major role in how people (especially students) approaches goals, tasks, and challenges. According to Bandura’s theory, people with high self-efficacy—that is, those who believe they can perform well—are more likely to view difficult tasks as something to be mastered rather than something to be avoided.

Albert Bandura – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Kelley, CEO of IDEO and head of Stanford University’s d.school, has a similar philosophy which he calls Creative Confidence. He says the key to being creative and achieving is “believing in your ability to create change in the world around you. It is the conviction that you can achieve what you set out to do. We think this self-assurance, this belief in your creative capacity, lies at the heart of innovation. Creative confidence is like a muscle–it can be strengthened and nurtured through effort and experience.”

David M. Kelley

Carol Dweck, social psychologist from Stanford University, talks about the power of “mindset” and how if people think their intelligence is flexible and can grow, they will achieve, but if they think it is fixed and there is nothing they can do about it, they tend to be afraid to try. People with a growth mindset understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They think that if they persevere, (mastery learning concept) they will succeed.

Carol Dweck

This is nothing new, but it is harder to do than to say. Students will rise to meet the expectations of their teachers and parents. By giving students the respect and having the expectation, teachers will be empowering kids. In my experience, students will achieve at levels far beyond what is expected if you give them the opportunity. Just believing in them helps them believe in themselves.

Independence

We all like independence; it is the foundation of our nation. For most children it starts when they are two years old and want to do everything themselves—to the chagrin of their parents. In elementary school, students want to be independent too, but as they progress through the system, they become more dependent on the teacher. By the time they are in high school—if they have been taught according to the old model—they are waiting to be told what to do. However, high school is a time when the students’ drive for independence should be at its peak. One way teachers can encourage this drive is to give students an opportunity to come up with their own projects within defined guidelines. For example, students could have a writing assignment, but one in which they pick the topic. It could be a restaurant review, with each student reviewing a restaurant of his or her choice.

Collaboration

Collaboration is an important part of the culture of the blended classroom. Students love to work with their peers, especially if they are working on a project they selected themselves. In fact, the main attraction of school for most students is being with their peers. So if teachers can make the environment a friendly, collaborative work space in which students feel comfortable, more learning will take place.

This type of learning is important for several reasons: 1) most workplaces today require collaboration and students need to practice those skills at school 2) students learn more when they are responsible for another students work 3) collaboration increases student interest in learning especially if it is on a common project such as a newspaper, magazine, video, or website.

Kindness

Kindness is self-evident. If students feel that the teacher is kind, they want to learn. I can remember many instances of being kind to students who had made mistakes. It paid off a hundred times, because the students were so grateful, it made them feel relaxed and accepted. Being kind not only in school, but in life in general, makes the difference. As the American religious leader William J. H. Boetcker (1873–1962) put it: “Your greatness is measured by your kindness; your education and intellect by your modesty; your ignorance is betrayed by your suspicions and prejudices, and your real caliber is measured by the consideration and tolerance you have for others.”

Esther Wojcicki teaches journalism and English at Palo Alto High School in California. She served as Chair of Creative Commons and is currently a vice-chair of Creative Commons and an advisor to The University of the People, a global online non-profit free university. You can follower her on Twitter @EstherWojcicki.

How do we measure learning beyond knowledge of content? Finding that winning combination of criteria can prove to be a complicated and sometimes difficult process. Schools that are pushing boundaries are learning that it takes time, a lot of conversation, and a willingness to let students participate in that evaluation.

“Most schools and most of our learning stops at knowing and we need to move that and broaden it to the doing and the reflecting,” said Bob Lenz, co-founder & chief executive officer of Envision Schools while participating in a Deeper Learning MOOC panel. The charter network’s teachers follow three steps for assessment: know, do, reflect. Skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration require practice, Lenz said. Students have to do them constantly and be observed throughout the process for a true assessment.

“The real power comes in the reflective process, both individually and with peers,” Lenz said. “Any of the deeper learning outcomes, the reflection is really where the power is and it puts the onus back on the student, instead of the teacher standing in judgment.” Most projects at Envision schools culminate in an exhibition of work at which students reflect on how they could have done things differently or improved on their work. All four years of high school at Envision are a cycle of performance frameworks feeding into a portfolio and culminating in a defense of four years of learning at which students show what they have learned by demonstrating their knowledge and skill, as well as the ability to learn how to learn.

RUBRICS

Teaching rubrics are a common tool in any classroom, but they can easily become a disguised checklist of tasks, instead of a living document designed to structure learning towards a desired skill or outcome. Setting clear goals about what students should know and be able to do when they graduate high school is a good way to start.

“We find it effective to start with the types of student outcomes that we’re after and have all the staff make sense of that, and commit to the common ‘why,’ and then have the instructional practices to reach those outcomes,” said Megan Pacheco, senior director of school design and implementation at the New Tech Network.

Having a rubric doesn’t mean students aren’t engaged in the assessment process or that there’s no room for surprise or creativity. “If those performance tasks are really open ended then students go about them in very unique ways,” Pacheco said. Asking students to dig into the rubric themselves, unpack it, compare themselves against it and reflect on that experience is a great way to get them to understand their own learning.

“Helping students not to think about assessment as just for a grade or the endpoint of learning, but really as that continuing path of development towards all the skills we know they need,” Pacheco said. Students could even be involved in creating the rubric.

“[Students] often don’t like using rubrics that I bring to them,” said Cady Staff, an eighth-grade teacher High Tech Middle Chula Vista. “So when I do use rubrics it would be a co-designed rubric.” Her students reject outside assessments that haven’t been personalized to their classroom and agreed upon by one another. The process of tinkering with the rubric can be on-going. For example, some students at the neighboring high school became interested in gun-violence and started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to make a documentary about gun violence in their lives. As they worked through their project, they continually changed what elements should be included in the rubric, as they experimented with what would entice people to give to their cause.

ASSESSING AT THE RIGHT MOMENT

In addition to making it clear to students what learning goals will be covered and required of them through the rubric or performance framework, students need constructive feedback in order to improve. But feedback isn’t always appropriate; there are times when it’s very effective and other times when it can be a waste of precious energy.

“Assessment is really time consuming and exhausting,” Staff said. “So when I do it, and give a lot of meaningful feedback, I want to do it at a time that it will help them to improve.” Students don’t want to know how they could have done better after they’ve already turned in the project. Peer assessment is another way for students to gain valuable input on how they can iterate on an idea or project, helping to push towards another, better version.

Assessment can happen as students work to improve their projects. Teachers don’t have to wait until students turn in a final product to know if they are understanding the content, demonstrating their knowledge, working well together, thinking critically through problems that arise and reflecting on their own work. In fact, that’s the only time many of those qualities can actively be assessed since learning happens over time and can’t be capture in just a snapshot. “Strive to help students assess their own deeper learning,” Staff said. When students can reflect on their own learning process to the point of assessing themselves, teachers know they’re learning deeply.

USING PISA AT SCHOOL LEVEL

One standardized test that has been praised for its ability to measure critical thinking and creativity is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international test that ranks countries in reading, math and science. While those scores give leaders a sense of U.S. students’ international competitiveness in the global market, they don’t give school-based data. A group of educators is trying to capitalize on what is considered to be a fairly effective test, bringing it down to the school level.

“It gives a school a sense of how they are doing on these deeper learning, critical thinking, problem solving skills,” said Peter Kannam, a managing partner with America Achieves tasked with coordinating the OECD Test for Schools. Schools have used the test to identify weaknesses and change course if necessary. One school found that while its students were reading more, they weren’t reading deeply. The school built in more emphasis on reading for enjoyment to engage students.

The drawback with the OECD Test For Schools, as with any assessment that tries to authentically measure soft skills, is that it’s expensive. It costs $11,000 to administer and score the OECD test in each school. “At the end of the day it costs money to grade,” Kannam said. That is typically the drawback with authentic assessment at scale. “We don’t need to necessarily do more assessments, we need to do better assessment,” Kannam said. He pointed out that many assessments currently in use for accountability purposes don’t give educators useful, actionable data at the classroom level.

SCALING AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENTS

Some educators are hoping that new assessments meant to test Common Core State Standards will provide more authentic assessment of some deeper learning skills. The Hewlett Foundation has been supporting work to grow the Deeper Learning Movement and believes that assessment will not only drive teacher practices, but is ultimately the only way to know if schools are succeeding in their efforts.

“We don’t know if we are getting any better unless we can document it,” said Marc Chun, program officer at the Hewlett Foundation. The foundation commissioned a National Center for Research, Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST) study to evaluate the Smarter Balanced and PARCC tests for various aspects of deeper learning. The study found that the test actually does measure content and critical thinking better than any other test and it does a reasonable job at measuring written communication.

“Ultimately what we want students to be able to do is solve problems they’ve never seen before,” Chun said. That’s why he thinks even nationally administered tests like those being used to evaluate Common Core standards can be effective. If a classroom is doing incredible project-based work or sending students on interesting and dynamic internships the ultimate test of how much students learned is their ability to transfer that knowledge to a new setting.

While the new tests don’t measure effective oral communication, collaboration, learning how to learn or develop academic mindsets — the other three and a half parts of Hewlett’s definition of deeper learning — there is still a lot of work to be done to effectively scale up well-rounded assessments of deeper learning. But Chun believes the new tests will be a step in the right direction.

Teachers are increasingly being pushed into new roles as their ability to connect online opens up new opportunities. Educators are finding their own professional development, sharing lesson plans and teaching tips with colleagues around the world, and have often become ambassadors to the public on new approaches to teaching and learning. Easy access to information has empowered many educators to think and teach differently, but often those innovations remain isolated inside classrooms. Without a school leader who trusts his or her teachers, it is difficult to convert pockets of innovation into a school culture of empowered teachers.

One way of building that kind of unified school culture is through distributed leadership, the idea that no one person at the top of the hierarchy makes all the decisions that will affect the work lives of the adults in the building. Instead, the school principal or district superintendent empowers teachers and staff to run crucial aspects of a school, such as admissions, professional development and new teacher mentoring.

“Distributed leadership is not ‘I empower you to do exactly what I say,’ ” said Chris Lehmann, principal of Science Leadership Academy in an EduCon session about how to effectively distribute power. Often leaders believe they are distributing power, but they are actually just delegating. For teachers to buy into a system like this, which asks more of their time outside class, they must feel they are professionals trusted by leadership.

“Teachers have to really own what they are in charge of,” said Aaron Gerwer, intern principal at SLA. “They have to be invested in what they’re doing.” To get that investment, teachers have to know that support from leadership won’t be pulled away at the first bump or disagreement. There has to be space for different perspectives.

“It is a shared belief in the big ideas,” Lehmann said. “However, within the manifestation of the big ideas there’s a lot of room.” It’s the leader’s job to listen and include different viewpoints in a school’s vision statement, and once that structure is set it should guide every decision. If school staff are constantly re-examining core beliefs, there is no time to get good at anything. Through flexibility and distributed leadership, staff can work together to improve the teaching practices that help them reach those big goals.

When teachers are part of the decision-making process, it also makes it harder to complain. And while not everyone in a school is going to agree on how to approach every problem, if the process is consistent, individuals can trust that even when they don’t get their way it will be OK. However, it is just as important for a strong leader to recognize when certain difficult decisions must be made solo — like layoffs, for example. In a community like SLA, Lehmann has to take responsibility for that decision to preserve the working relationships of the rest of his staff.

HABITS OF MIND OF A DISTRIBUTED LEADER

Educators at EduCon had a lot of ideas about how leaders can gain the trust of their staff and genuinely hand over some decision-making power. Good leaders are out in the hallways and classrooms, staying connected to the real work in schools. Leaders model vulnerability, making it OK for their staff to admit a unit didn’t work as well as they’d planned or to ask for help supporting a difficult student. And, while many leaders want to be visible and timely, sometimes taking in information and reflecting before making a decision is the best course of action. Strong leaders try not to say “no” to ideas from teachers, but rather push them to refine their ideas until they are actionable.

“You have to be a planner and you have to be strategic,” Lehmann said. As with teaching, if a leader is constantly in crisis mode there won’t be the time and space to make the most strategic decisions or the strongest lessons. “Planning doesn’t mean having the answers,” Lehmann said. “It often means having the questions.” It also means anticipating the challenges and sticking with the hard work it takes to lead in this unconventional way.

IF IT’S SO HARD, WHY DO IT?

When done well, distributing leadership creates a community of people on the same page, working hard toward defined goals. And when teachers feel valued and trusted, they are more likely to trust and empower their students. “The way that SLA is led by Chris is the way that teachers teach,” said SLA teacher Tim Best. And when students are empowered to lead, they not only learn to trust their own capabilities — they also produce their best work.

Shifting school culture is not easy or quick. Often it is impossible to keep all the original staff and still make a culture change. “The people make the culture, so people are either going to come on board with you or you’ll have to coach them out,” Lehmann said. It takes careful and strategic scaffolding over a number of years (as many as seven) to shift and sustain a new school culture, he said.

Setting up the systems is the easy part. “The years it takes to get buy-in to make sure the change stays is the hard part,” Lehmann said. And ultimately, as with so many things in education, the success of a leader comes down to the strength of relationships.

“You can seek to control or you can seek to support, but very rarely can you do both,” Lehmann said. One underrated quality he says leaders need is the ability to say, “I’m sorry,” and mean it.

By Cory Turner, NPR

In his new book, Raising Kids Who Read, Daniel Willingham wants to be clear: There’s a big difference between teaching kids to read and teaching them to love reading.

And Willingham, a parent himself, doesn’t champion reading for the obvious reasons — not because research suggests that kids who read for pleasure do better in school and in life.

“The standard things you’ll hear about why kids should read I actually don’t think are very strong arguments,” he says. “Because if the goal is to become a good citizen or the goal is to make a lot of money, I can think of more direct ways to reach those goals than to read during your leisure time.”

Willingham wants his kids to love reading because, he says, “for me it’s a family value. It’s something that I love, something that I find important. I think I gain experiences I wouldn’t gain any other way by virtue of being a reader. And so naturally I want my children to experience that.”

The professor of psychology at the University of Virginia uses his new book to map out strategies for parents and teachers hoping to kindle that same passion for reading.

What are a few things we can do when kids are young to set them on a path to being passionate readers?

Before preschool, probably the most important thing you can do is to play games that help your child hear speech sounds: rhyming games, reading aloud books that have a lot of rhyme in them and other types of wordplay, like alliteration. That’s helpful.

Once they get that basic idea, you can get a little fancier. And these are the games that kids really love — where you play around with speech sounds.

If you had a child named Billy. You could say, ‘Daddy’s name is Cory. What if we took the first sound in Billy’s name, and my name is now Bory.’ That kind of stuff is comic gold for kids. I talk with a lot of kindergarten teachers who say it’s hard to get kids to stop doing stuff like that.

Banana-fana-fo-fana…

Exactly. You know, Dr. Seuss is full of that. Nursery rhymes are full of that. And it’s been known for a while that kids who grow up in homes where they are exposed to nursery rhymes learn to read more readily than other kids.

But how do you foster a love of reading in young children?

The most obvious is to be a model of someone who loves reading. One of the things I hit hard in this book is the idea of creating a sense in the child that this is what we value in our family. I think a lot of parents don’t appreciate what a powerful message that can be for kids — like the things that are on your wall, the rules you set in your household, who parents talk about as the people they respect.

You should model reading, make reading pleasurable, read aloud to your kid in situations that are warm and create positive associations. But also setting a tone where our family is one where we like to learn new things. We like to learn about the world, and a big part of that is reading. Developing a sense in the child that I am in a family of readers before the child can even read.

The second big piece I would recommend is you have to make reading the most appealing thing a child can do. It’s not enough that the child like reading. If they like reading but there’s something else available that they like more, they’re going to choose that. The easy way to start is to put books in places that your child would otherwise be bored. The most obvious one is in the car. Part of that is also making sure you’re not providing other types of ready entertainment at every moment.

My wife put a basket in our bathroom, full of kids magazines. My 6-year-old reads them voraciously, and now his 3-year-old brother copies him.

My 9-year-old is a very passionate reader, and I think her younger sister is too. But I think it’s in no small part that she grew up watching her older sister do this.

Do you think digital devices are a) keeping us from reading and b) keeping us from being able to focus?

There’s no evidence they’re keeping us from being able to focus. If you look at the way psychologists typically measure span of attention, there’s no evidence that it’s really declined in the last 50 years or so. The brain is plastic, but I think attention is so central to so much of what we do that it seems pretty improbable to me that attention span could shrink significantly. If it did, either we would all get really stupid or lots of other cognitive processes would have to adjust in some way.

I think there is something to what parents and teachers think they’re seeing. They feel like kids are more distractible than they were 10 years ago, and they blame digital devices. What all these digital devices have in common is they provide instant entertainment. And the entertainment they provide requires very little effort from me. It’s always available. There’s pretty much endless variety. So the consequence may be that span of attention hasn’t shrunk but rather what’s changed is our attitudes and beliefs. And our attitudes and beliefs are, ‘Bored is not a normal state of affairs. I really should never be bored.’

What’s your point of view when it comes to rewarding kids for reading?

Rewards have the real potential to backfire. You communicate to your child, ‘This is not something I expect you to do on your own.’ You pay people to do things that you think are unpleasant and that they wouldn’t do if you weren’t paying them. So, by paying your child for reading, you’re very clearly communicating to your child, ‘This is not something that I expect to be pleasurable for you.’

There is good empirical evidence that, when you pay people to do something, if you find the right reward they will do more of it. But once the reward stops, they will quite possibly do less of it. The reason being, they have a different attribution for why they were doing it in the first place. So the child who wasn’t paid looks back and says, ‘I’ve been reading this book because I’m the kind of kid who likes books.’ But if, instead, the attribution is, ‘I was reading this book because Dad paid me,’ now, if Dad is no longer paying him, he has no reason to read this book. That said, my recommendation is that a reward not be the first thing you try. But, if it is the only way to get a kid to read, then I would certainly consider it.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The excerpt below is from the book “Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies to Help Students Thrive in School and Beyond,” by Larry Ferlazzo. This excerpt is from the chapter entitled “I Still Want to Know: How Can You Get Students More Interested in Reading and Writing?”

Let’s begin with a review of those essential qualities (needed to develop intrinsic motivation) in the context of reading and writing:

♦ Autonomy. A major Pew Research Center report (Lenhart et al., 2008) found that choice has an equally important role in teens feeling a desire to write (the story in Chapter 1 of my student who was energized by writing about football illustrates this point). Likewise, in reading, extensive research documents that teachers encouraging students to read books of their choice for pleasure is a major contribution towards students developing a positive attitude towards reading and a life-long interest in it (Leisure Reading Task Force, 20014, p. 2).

♦ Competence. A scene from the HBO series The Leftovers (http:// www.hbo.com/the-leftovers) succinctly explains why this quality is so important for intrinsic motivation. In it, two FBI agents were sitting in an office, and one told the other that his child wanted to quit soccer and wanted to know if he should let him do it. The other agent asked him, “Is he any good at it?” The first agent responded, “Nobody quits what they’re good at,” and much research backs him up (Tsioulcas, 2013; Yuhas, 2012). Providing scaffolding like writing frames and strategies/tools such as graphic organizers (student- or teacher-created) for responding to prompts (Ferlazzo, 2013, p. 144) can assist students’ developing confidence as writers. The Progress Principle, which highlights that intrinsic motivation can be driven by people seeing meaningful progress in their work, was mentioned in the first chapter and in previous titles in this series (Ferlazzo, 2013, p. 10). Creating structured opportunities for students to see their progress in reading and writing by comparing work (preferably emphasizing tools like “improvement rubrics” that focus more on what they have successfully done and less on their deficits [Ferlazzo, 2011, p. 79]) done at the beginning of the school year with accomplishments later in the year can also support student feelings of competence. In fact, at our school English folders are passed up through the grades and students can see and reflect on their progress over the years!

♦ Relatedness. The Pew Research Center found that teens say the most important factor for them to feel motivated to write is using it as a way to connect with, and receive feedback from, teachers, family members, and friends (Lenhart et al., 2008). Opportunities for students to discuss what they are reading with their teachers and with their peers in low-or-no-stakes environments has been found to promote a greater interest in reading (Leisure Reading Task Force, 2014, p. 4).

♦ The work is seen as interesting, and valuable for future goals. In other words, as mentioned in Chapter 1, students should see it as relevant to their present lives and/or hopes and dreams for the future.

Choice Equals Power: How to Motivate Students to Learn

Case Studies: How Teachers Use Tech to Support Learning

Can Character Be Taught?

Teachers Embrace Digital Learning Strategies

A slight “qualifier” should be attached to the second part of this last element— the one about it being seen as helpful to hopes and dreams for the future. As mentioned in Chapter 1, some researchers suggest that teachers explicitly pointing out how skills being taught in the classroom can be used in the future by students can be damaging to intrinsic motivation, particularly if they do not feel confident in their abilities or have little interest in the subject (Hulleman et al., 2010, p. 881). This issue is particularly relevant to a discussion on reading and writing since a significant percentage of students, particularly boys, often say that English is not a favorite subject (Wiggins, 2014) and multiple surveys have found that decreasing percentages of young people say they enjoy reading (Leisure Reading Task Force, 2014, p. 3). As a result of these negative attitudes, many of us teachers may tend to use a motivational strategy of emphasizing to students how important literacy will be to any of their future goals (Ferlazzo, 2013, p. 147).

Is this a bad strategy? The slightly “qualified” answer is yes, no, and possibly maybe . . . Other researchers also suggest that we need to be particularly careful when we focus on relevance towards a student’s goals, though they also see potential benefits. Motivation researchers Edward Deci and Richard Ryan call slightly different versions of it “regulation through identification” and “integrated regulation.” They believe the motive of wanting to do something less for the joy it brings and more for its instrumental value towards achieving a goal is a less harmful form of extrinsic motivation that—on a continuum—is as close as you can get to intrinsic motivation without being there (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 61). They also point out, however, that its promotion can still bring many benefits, including greater engagement and learning as well as increasing the potential that those tasks can be moved to the final step of intrinsically motivated, as long as the other three elements—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—are present (Ryan & Deci, 2000, pp. 63, 65). Indeed, organizers of the 2012 international PISA test in 2012 found that, over the previous ten years, countries where students reported an increase in intrinsic motivation also reported an increase in students reporting this kind of instrumental motivation (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2012, p. 74).

So, what does this “qualifier” mean practically for our classroom practice? Is it a group of academicians arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (What’s the historical origin, n.d.)? Or is it a meaningful nuance we should seriously consider?

I would suggest that teachers explicitly connecting what is being taught in school to student goals—by pointing it out themselves or by drawing it out of students (which, as Chapter 1 pointed out, appears to have less damaging potential)—can have a place in class, but also has to be kept in its place. In my experience, we will get fewer “Why are we learning this?” questions in learning environments that promote autonomy, competence, relatedness, or are connected to student interest. But when we do, I don’t see anything wrong in helping students make those connections to their personal and professional goals or periodically having teacher- initiated lessons with that focus, such as several in this book and in previous ones (Ferlazzo, 2013, p. 147). On the other hand, constantly getting “Why are we learning this?” or “How are we going to use this?” questions might be an important indicator that we are not doing as good a job as we could be on implementing those other important conditions necessary for the development of intrinsic motivation.

Larry Ferlazzo is an award-winning teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. He writes a popular education blog and a teacher advice column for Education Week Teacher. You can follow him on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.