Yesterday I was hanging out with my 53 year old, grey haired colleague and friend Andrew. He's comes across as pessimistic and oppositionist, and has no problem scoffing at ideas he disagrees with. At the same time, he seems to have the heart of an educator who cares about his students.
Yesterday as we sat at an octagonal park bench on our small campus, he told me about an activity he says works every time with Saudi students who are notoriously undisciplined. Though I would say that they simply have teachers who don't give the students what they need to learn. In my experience, students give teachers what the teacher gives them. It's an important and rapid example of sowing and reaping. If you give them true respect though consistently and constantly allowing students to keep their problems, and trusting students to solve them, while through kindness and courage holding them accountable to proper classroom behavior, while giving them extremely engaging classroom activities aligned with the learning objectives of the day, week, month, and semester, and with the values and skills of critical thinking and problem solving for themselves which enables them to take control of their own learning and thereby internalizing an internal locas of control, then typically students will buy in. But only if the teacher demonstrates that they genuinely care for their students, and how now's decisions change tomorrow's outcomes, for better or worse. If students don't feel the risk of failure and the authentic possibility of success by engaging in the activities of the day's lesson, then they won't do the work and will cause problems and resist instruction, and resist learning because they've already given up. They must know that the teacher authentically and deeply believes in them, and feel the teacher imbue them and their hearts and emotions with the confidence that they are capable of tackling and fulfilling the tasks of the activities of the lessons set in front of them on their path to achievement, competence, and increasing levels of intelligence and material and emotional prosperity. As it is written, "Those who believe in God must believe that he is, and that is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Or as the king in Beowulf put it, if you Beowulf go forth and defeat the beast, you will be rewarded with riches, silver, gold, jewels, and marriage to the princess. King Saul promised a daughter of his to David in marriage if he defeated Goliath in combat.
Students must know there is a real price for failure and reward for success that aligns with what they authentically want and need in life. And this dynamic must play out practically in how we speak to our students, and the systems of activity, or games, we offer them to enter into and engage with. From the perspective of game theory, an ineffective and inefficient game doesn't meet students needs for fun, variety, intellectual challenge, or emotional edification. But a good game accomplishes all these things and more and is intrinsically motivating because it rewards them on multiple levels for their efforts.
I think Andrew's game goes a noticeable length to meeting students motivational needs and desires.
He told me that the game he plays is having the class divide up into teams of three, and then assigns them specific roles. First, they set up a table outside with a certain text about which questions need to be answered and/or that needs to be read. What happens is, one student runs outside to read and memorize as much text as they can, then comes in and sits with the other two students on his team and communicates the information from the text to them while one of them writes it down. And then, I think, the third student is responsible for filling in the questions on the page. Then the students repeat the process until the teacher announces, "Change!" Then the students switch roles, and a different student runs outside to memorize, and then communicate the information to his or her classmates.
Apparently, it's possible to run this activity endlessly.
Now, if you take the delegation system I wrote about in the previous article and apply it simultaneously, then the class should run itself for several minutes if not hours.
This system would be a powerful way to enable students to get what they want, which is adventure, learning, risks, and change.
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