In the following paper, I investigate current teaching methodologies in high school English, using journal articles as my primary resource, but also drawing my personal experiences working at West, with the hopes of finding methods for motivating students of all different backgrounds to succeed in English class.

 

Fiona Worcester

Research Paper

ED691- Teaching Internship

Dr. David Marvel

December 2011

 

Motivating West High School’s Students to Achieve in English Class: Reflections from Current Research and Practice

 

“School is boring.” This is not an uncommon statement at West High School, the school from which I graduated six years ago, and at which I currently work as a teacher-intern. At West, the students are broadly heterogeneous, across ethnic identity, national origin, race, socioeconomic background, educational tradition, and intellectual capacity. My first hour English 10 class demonstrates this extreme level of diversity. More than twelve of them speak a language other than English at home. While five of them are reading below a 6th grade reading level, another four of them have been or are currently enrolled in honors classes for English or Social Studies. While the statistical data on the school may show many differences between the students, there also appears to be a common identity; with a dropout rate of 35% in 2010, motivation issues seem to be somewhat universal. In the following paper, I investigate current teaching methodologies in high school English, using journal articles as my primary resource, but also drawing my personal experiences working at West, with the hopes of finding methods for motivating students of all different backgrounds to succeed in English class.

Motivating students

In her article, “Creating Motivating Learning Environments: What We Can Learn from Researchers and Students” (2010), Erica Daniels’ states: “Teachers cannot make someone motivated, but they can create motivating learning environments.” Based on the psychological research of Richard Ryan & Edward Deci, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, and herself, Daniels presents three aspects that enhance student motivation. Students feel motivated (1) when they feel some sense of autonomy over their learning, (2) when they feel connected to the class and the school, and (3) when they feel as if they are adequately prepared to address the challenges of school.

Daniels asserts that adolescents want to feel some sense of control over their lives, and when students are allowed choices of what to read and options on how to demonstrate their learning, they come to develop ownership of their learning, enhancing their motivation. Both of my mentor teachers allow for such student choice in their classrooms, and cite it as a major source of student motivation. Ms. Johnson, allows her honors students to select which of three books they want to read for the Romanticism unit, and frequently allows students to choose the groups in which they will be working. Miss Ardy, allows students to choose an essay topic from one of several and to choose the topic for their final research paper.

            Daniels believes that students feel connected to the class and school when they feel that their teachers care about them and when they are actively engaged in their own learning. Daniels also stresses a theme that I emphasize in my classroom; that English is fundamentally about communication. People read, write, speak and listen daily not because they wish to succeed in English class, but to simply communicate! Daniels asserts that after teaching the standards, students should be provided with a range of activities with which to construct their own understandings of the lesson, including making and presenting models, writing essays, and leading and participating in discussions. Such an exercise empowers the students to demonstrate their knowledge in their own contexts, allowing students to create their own connections with their classmates, teachers, and with school at large using their own skills of communication.

            Finally, Daniels states that in order to feel motivated, students must be feel adequately prepared to address the demands of school. In addition to modeling the skills needed for particular assignments, including expository writing skills, teaching students skills in note-taking, organization, prioritization and stress-management can be critical towards enhancing motivation in the English classroom.

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            Daniels believes that creating a motivating classroom environment can best be achieved by promoting student autonomy, connectedness with school, and proper skill set development. While Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher would agree that these ingredients are not only helpful but perhaps even necessary for student motivation, they believe that the true key to motivating high school English students is properly assigned and implemented group work. In their article, “Motivating Requires a Meaningful Task” (2010), Frey & Fisher explain that as students approach high school age, motivation declines and bottoms out, just as adolescents are increasingly turning to their peers groups for “validation and support”. They explain that teachers often “lower the bar” in response to this decreased motivation, providing less challenging individual coursework.

Frey & Fisher believe that by capitalizing on this need for peer interaction, teachers can provide challenging and thus motivating group work, provided that the students know that they will have adequate support from peers and their teacher. Teachers can achieve this balance between challenge and motivation by following the framework of educational psychology Carole Ames, which utilizes the acronym “TARRGET”. A teacher must create an interesting and challenging Task, allow student Autonomy in creating and implementing the learning activity, provide adequate Resources, provide opportunities for students to both receive and give Recognition and Evaluation, and spend his or her Time as a teacher providing assistance and encouragement.

            Ms. Johnson (one of my mentor teachers) subscribes to group work wholeheartedly, with almost all in-class work in her Honors 10 English class centering on engaging group work. Miss Ardy, however, does not utilize group work very often in her English 9 and 11 classes. I think both teachers are utilizing the correct strategy for their particular group of students. At West High School, unfortunately, Miss Ardy and I have both found that students in regular education classes have trouble working well in groups in academic settings. Perhaps they are not often enough provided adequate resources or a challenging enough task, but I find that my students are unmotivated to stay on-track when working in group situations.

I believe that the main reason why group work is not a good motivator for regular education students is the fact that unless students are in a series of classes with a special label (such as “honors” or “special education”), there is no “teaming”. This means that the regular education students do not necessarily share any other classes with their classmates in my class, and thus have not formed friendships with them, and do not likely consider them to be “peers” outside of class. The heterogeneity of the school population further exacerbates this issue, as students do not seem to see interacting with these “non-peer” classmates as a motivator, but, rather, as something to be avoided. Though teachers can go a long way in bridging these gaps, it is very difficult for one student-teacher to change a school’s culture.

Ms. Johnson, in teaching honors kids, operates in a more homogenous team-like atmosphere, and thus can utilize Frey & Fisher’s paradigm of motivating students through challenging group work. Miss Ardy, who works with regular students, seems to do better by utilizing Daniel’s advice, and designing motivating work that provides for students’ autonomy and incorporates connectedness with peers and school, while simultaneously providing students with the skill sets they need to properly attack the assignments.

Linking Classroom Motivation with Classroom Discipline Issues

            As discussed above, it is important for students to play an active role in creating and implementing motivating class work. In her article, “A Positive Classroom Climate: Create It … Sustain It” (2010), Katherine Evans expresses the view that it is also important for students to play a role in instilling classroom discipline in general:

[W]hen the teacher bears the sole responsibility for controlling classroom activities and behavior, students miss out on the opportunity to develop social skills and emotional regulative capacities.

Undoubtedly, this could lead to enhanced motivation. Interestingly, Evans draws parallels to Daniel’s three goals by citing a recently-developed model of discipline called “Resorative Justice”. In this model, individuals build their lives around three “pillars”: “autonomy”, “order”, and “relatedness”,  which would seem to be closely related to Daniels three motivational factors: “autonomy”, “preparedness”, and “connectedness”. According to the model, misbehaviors result when students’ needs are not met in one of these areas.

If we can agree that Restorative Justice’s “three pillars” and Daniels three factors of motivation are similar (if not identical), we would have to conclude that misbehavior not only results from unmet personal needs, but reflects the absence of either a student’s motivation or a motivating classroom environment in general. In “Restorative Justice”, Evans tell us, “students are given the opportunity to make amends when they have wronged someone, strengthening problem-solving and social responsibility in a manner that applies to real life.” Perhaps instead of viewing misbehavior as grounds for punishment, it would be most beneficial to view it as an opportunity to have a conversation and learn what can be improved. The question then becomes: What needs must be met such that an individual student feels the autonomy, connectedness, and preparedness to be motivated rather than disruptive in the classroom environment?

Motivating Special Education Students

Motivating special education students to achieve in a regular education classroom often presents a particular challenge. In the most recent issue of English Journal, Lisa Storm Fink reflects on the way in which her personal teaching strategies have evolved over her 15-year teaching career with regards to special education students, and, especially, the changes she has made in her teaching in response to giving birth to a child with disability (2010). She states:

I realized I had been operating under the paradigm that it is my job as the teacher to present the material and the students’ job to learn it. I took my part of the job seriously, working diligently to create detailed and structured assignments rich with rigorous content. If a student was unsuccessful, it was easy for me to tell myself that I had done my part of the job and to record the F as the natural consequence of the student’s actions.

She realized upon further self-examination, however, the further importance of providing students with individualized attention and personal empathy. Fink also sought to use her teaching material to reach students, using books like To Kill a Mockingbird and stories like “the Scarlet Ibis” as a jumping-off point to discuss “otherness” more generally, a topic to which many special education students can readily relate.

These are both strategies that I apply readily in my classroom. However, as a first year curriculum-writer and grader with idealistic and perfectionist tendencies, my mentor teachers have stressed to me that I have to accept that some of my students will fail regardless of my best efforts and intentions. Regardless, I must always keep in mind Finks’ two worthy goals – giving each of my students personal attention and personal empathy – with the hopes of assisting them in connecting with and learning the material to their best of their abilities.

Innovations in Motivating English Language Learners (ELLs)

As more and more people in the world learn English internationally, English classrooms are becoming “linguistic contact zones” in which the language used in the teaching and learning is coming into contact with other languages present in the minds of the students. This is certainly the case in my first-hour class, where more than half of the students speak a language other than English at home, and this is undoubtedly the case at West High in general, where I have heard teachers jokingly refer to general education classes as “Honors ESL”.

An international group of researchers has recently formulated teaching methods that harness students’ native language skills to help students better learn the material in English (Cazden, C., Kwek, D., & Comber, B., 2010; Martin-Beltra, M., 2009). The authors cite programs in numerous countries, including Brunei, Singapore, Australia, and the U.S., in which teachers have crafted lessons that are taught and/or processed and/or learned in more than one language simultaneously, allowing students to utilize their first languages to build and express understanding and scaffold from there into understanding the material in English. In writing narratives, students might reflect on the differences between writing in different languages. During a science lesson, students might initially discuss the concepts in their first language before moving on to discuss it in English.

The benefit of these programs seems clear to me; it is not uncommon to come across a West High ELL student who seems to understand what they are reading, but who cannot write a coherent sentence – let alone paragraph – to explain their thoughts in English. I have a hunch that if they had adequate opportunity to express their thoughts in their native language first, many of them could work toward expressing the concepts in English. This goes back to the ideas presented by Daniels, Frey & Fisher, and Evans; by allowing students to connect with the material in a socially meaningful way, we can create a more motivating classroom environment.

Unfortunately, this model would not work well at West High. The successful programs cited relied on two or three homogenous populations fluent in the same first languages. For instance, in Southern California, a program could be implemented in a school in which 30% of the students speak Spanish at home, and 70% speak English at home. In my first hour class of 24 students, however, it would be difficult to implement such a program; there are eight or so languages spoken, but only three languages have the two speakers or more requisite to hold a conversation (English, Filipino, and Samoan). Also, these programs require support instructor fluent in the native languages; it would be impossible to obtain the staff necessary to successfully implement these programs as they are for all ELL students at West.

Motivating Boys to Read in the Classroom

Though, on average, males and females have an equal IQ, boys lag far behind girls in school performance. At West, two-thirds of the regular education population is male and one-third is female; in the honors classes, the reverse is the case. Of the 7 boys who failed my two classes this fall, six were boys – and the girl who failed simply wasn’t there. Unfortunately, I have noticed that most of the boys who fail my class refuse to read. In his article, (“Making Connections With the Boys Who Struggle in Your Classroom” (2010), Louis Martinez sought to discover why some boys read in his classroom and others do not.

Modeling his reading program after the pedagogy of Laura Robb, Martinez began by having students respond to reading surveys, questionnaires, and informal writing prompts. From there, Martinez allowed students to choose their own books to read quietly during a period of class and conducted 5 - 7 minute “one-on-one reading conferences” with individual students. The students kept notebooks in which they responded to questions that centered on their reading. Martinez kept a notebook himself, full of observations, reflections, and initial conversations with students.

Though Martinez does not seem to address boys in particular in his findings, his conclusions seem to confirm those of Daniels and Evans; he found that autonomy, connectedness, and preparedness are powerful motivational elements. When students were allowed the autonomy to choose the books that interested them, they not only felt empowered, they felt more connected to literature in general. By “[bringing] nonfiction and popular culture into the classrooms” students felt more connected to school and their teachers. These conferences not only allowed Martinez to connect with students as individuals, it allowed him to differentiate his instruction by adjusting his curriculum and better preparing individual students to succeed in his class. Martinez’s findings also mirrored those of Fink; he found that by empathizing with individual students and providing individualized attention, he could increase motivation.

 Conclusion

Based on the research papers reviewed here, teachers can improve motivation in high school students by providing for student autonomy, by creating opportunities for students to connect with teachers, peers, and school, and by adequately furnishing students with the skills they need to perform the tasks at hand. To better connect with their students and thus increase student motivation, teachers should seek opportunities to empathize with their students and provide individualized attention instruction.

 

Sources Cited

Cazden, C., Kwek, D., & Comber, B (2010). Subject English in bilingual and multilingual settings: Embracing the linguistic Other. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8 (2), 1-5. Retrieved December 16, 2010, from Freely Accessible Arts & Humanities Journals.

Daniels, E.. (2010). Creating Motivating Learning Environments: What We Can Learn from Researchers and Students. English Journal, 100(1), 25-29.  Retrieved December 16, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals.

Evans, K. (2010). A Positive Classroom Climate: Create It… Sustain It. English Leadership Quarterly, 33 (1), 13-14. Retrieved December 16, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals.

Frey, N., & Fisher, D.. (2010). Motivation Requires a Meaningful Task. English Journal, 100(1), 30-36.  Retrieved December 16, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals.

Martinez, L.. (2010). Making Connections with the Boys Who Struggle in Your Classroom. English Journal, 100(2), 121-124.  Retrieved December 16, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals.

Merritt, T., & Fink, L.. (2010). Finding the Will to Individualize Instruction: How My Son Made Me a Better Teacher. English Journal, 100(2), 49-55.  Retrieved December 16, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals.

Martin-Beltra, M. (2009). Cultivating Space for the language boomerang: The interplay of two language as academic resources. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8 (2), 25-53. Retrieved
December 16, 2010, from Freely Accessible Arts & Humanities Journals.