MAT671 Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation

Reflecting on my public school education as well as my college experience, I feel very lucky.  I worked with mostly inspiring teachers/coaches who pushed me to be the best student/athlete I could be.  The impact of a truly wonderful teacher stays with you forever and even though my high school days seem like a lifetime ago, I will forever remember a class I took all four years of high school called Great Books taught my a Mr. Bill Cole.  I worked harder in that class than maybe all of my other classes put together.  I really spent some time thinking about why I worked so hard in that class when I had no problem blowing off every single math class I ever took.  Here are the reasons I worked so hard in that class:  1.  The set up of the class empowered me to make choices about what I was studying.  Each quarter every student got to choose two books, plays, poems, or historical events that correlated to the time period we were studying, to report on in a seminar setting.  Students signed up to attend the seminars and Mr. Cole posted questions about each reading/event to research and be prepared to discuss in depth.  I had no idea what existentialism was when I was 14 years old, but I became deeply motivated to understand it because I had to discuss it during my seminar.  2.  The accountability of the seminar was a huge motivator for me.  I was a freshman in a senior English class and I most definitely didn't want to embarrass myself.  Once I lived through my first seminar, I was totally addicted to the process of moving through the questions and hearing everyone's different perceptive of a single question.  That's when I learned there is no one correct answer to most questions.  3.  Mr. Cole's feedback was another important motivator for me.  He was very specific and pointed in his feedback to how you answered each question.  He took copious notes while we all spoke and really made each of us feel smart and gave our words value.  This was such a confidence builder for me and led me to use my voice more than I would have had I not been told my words were important and interesting on so many occasions by someone I respected.  The more I received positive feedback, the harder I tried and the more academic risks I took in my responses to the readings.  4.  I had so much respect for my teacher and his intelligence, and experiences that I felt I had to perform my best so I didn't disappoint him.  I felt valued by him and I wanted to live up to the perceived expectations he had for me as a student.  5.  Finally, I love reading, and history, and stories of pretty much any kind.  I was mesmerized by the history he taught us; it wasn't like the history in my textbook.  I loved his description of each and every book on our list and I agonized over which two to chose because they all sounded so good.  I was really interested in the content and that helped motivate me to tackle some really challenging pieces at a very young age.

On the other hand, I have had experiences that too took some of that confidence away and made me want to give up.  I had one teacher in particular who did everything out of order.  All of her words were out of order, her directions were so difficult for me to follow I just felt frustrated all of the time.  I never really understood what I was supposed to do, or how to get a good grade on an assignment.  I'm not sure she knew my name, or the names of my classmates.  She did refer to us as "beady eyed little slugs sitting on a long."  I was shocked.  I had never been spoken to like that by a teacher and I was very disillusioned.  She didn't think we were capable of doing very much and I know I dutifully lived up to that low expectation.  This was a chemistry class, and to be fair, science (sorry I know that's your subject) was never a class I automatically loved.  If I liked my teacher then I liked the class ok.   However, in my chemistry class, due to my high frustration and her seeming lack of interest in her class I basically shut down.  I did what I had to do at a very minimal level.  I didn't want to work very hard because I never had any clue if I was doing anything correctly.  Any attempts to ask questions were thwarted with her signature response; "If you are not going to listen to the directions, then find a friend, if you have one, to help explain it to you."  She said that to everyone if you asked a question.  After awhile of every grade being a c with no feedback, I just assumed she never looked at anything we turned in.

I knew that wasn't my usual classroom experience and I had many positive role models and success in school so that helped keep me focused in my other classes.  Science was always difficult for me, but like I said, once I was finished with chemistry, I never took another science class until college.  I took astronomy and an earth science class because I thought they would be the easiest ones and since I wasn't very good at science I needed to take the easy classes.  I am not sure I have ever restored my own personal belief in my ability to understand a lot about science.  For example, my children just informed me yesterday that the moon's light is a reflection of the sun.    I looked it up when we got home to be sure they were right.

There are so many wonderful and inventive ways to motivate students and I try as many as I can because you never know what is going to motivate someone.  I love trying to figure out each individual student's exact motivational combination.  Here are some of the different strategies I use to try to motivate my students.  I work very hard to make personal connections with my students every day.  I speak to every student each day and check in with them when I notice something is off, or they are really excited about something.  I want them to trust me because I know that most of them will work for teachers they feel care about them.  I think that for some, I may be the last English teacher they have and I want to be sure they leave my classroom feeling like nothing is out of reach for them should they chose it.  I spend time telling them why reading and writing are so important.  I make it clear that I push them with their writing because I want them to feel confident enough about their skills to go to college if they want to.  When we surveyed our students five years ago, 67 % said they didn't even consider college because it is too hard.  That broke my heart and our school has made significant improvements in getting students set up at Fullerton Junior College with counselors and some elective credits they can take on our high school campus as seniors.  It's fine if students don't choose college because they have other interests, but it's not fine if they don't go because they feel like they don't have the skills.  I also give very precise feedback.  I do not believe in false compliments.  I can find something positive to say about work the students submit, and it is important to tell them what they are doing better now than they were before.  I want my feedback to matter to them so I am very careful and specific with the comments I make.  I work to be someone my students can look up to and respect.  I give my students as much choice as I can.  I give them opportunities to voice their opinions.   I ask my students to set goals and reflect on their effort and progress toward achieving that goal.   I give clear directions with clear rubrics so students know what they need to do in order to meet the educational goals.  My hope is some combination of all of that works to help motivate my students to work hard and learn as much as they can.

I avoid being a hypocrite as a teacher.  That kind of behavior will destroy any relationship or credibility a teacher tries to establish with his/her class.  I avoid giving false or empty praise; your students will know.  I avoid trying to fit all students into one mold and have found that the more open I am to different possibilities for students to communicate what they know, the more they blow me away with what they are thinking.  I avoid ever raising my voice; yelling is destructive!  I avoid calling names or publicly shaming students.  Those behaviors  listed above do nothing to motivate; they only turn the classroom into a place no one wants to be.

Webb's DOK and Bloom's Taxonomy

After 18 years of teaching, I am very familiar with Bloom's taxonomy and higher level thinking skills.  I have the list of Bloom's verb headings burned into my head and work to hit the more sophisticated levels of thinking beyond basic recall.  I am of course a fan of using questioning skills to further student cognitive growth and reading comprehension.  The levels of questioning are how we teach skills like critical thinking that will serve students in their real lives.  What I was not so familiar with was the information regarding Webb's DOK.  I can see now how Bloom's different levels of thinking can be enhanced when connected to Webb's DOK information.  I thought the Cognitive Rigor Matrix was very helpful in showing how teachers can take a more simple task of "understanding" and move it to level three or four on Webb's DOK by asking the students to do more sophisticated tasks to prove they understand what they are reading.  I appreciate how each of Bloom's levels of thinking were enhanced by considering the skills required to hit that specific thinking level.  Karin Hess said that "Webb's Depth of Knowledge is about complexity not difficulty" which made an impact on how I was thinking about these two ways to increase reading comprehension skills through questioning.  It was helpful to consider that you can make something that is not necessarily difficult, complex.

In summary, the Cognitive Rigor Matrix can be useful to any teacher who is trying to break down the steps of getting students to master the higher order thinking skills.  Blooms Taxonomy clearly identifies the different thinking levels but when you combine that with Webb's DOK now a teacher has a path to move a student into deeper thinking and more challenging ways to show their thinking.  For example, the most difficult level of thinking on Blooms hierarchy is "Create".  I did not regularly consider how to break down the different depths of this one particular level of thinking.  I think that is why so many students struggle when they are confronted with a task that requires this type of thinking.  For example, in my English I class, I asked my students to draw the name of a Greek god/goddess out of a hat and answer questions about them as if they lived in the modern world.  I review a few known facts about the different choices and then expect the students to create conjectures based on what they know.  This has traditionally been a fun, creative project that allows students to create at a level two DOK.  In my comprehensive high school classes, students had no trouble, but when I moved to a continuation high school and tried the same assignment, some of my students were confused.  They wanted to know why they couldn't find an answer for a good modern day job for Zeus anywhere on the internet.  Using conjecture based on information was a very challenging task.  I had to scaffold that assignment more and get them comfortable with the idea that they would be making up the answers based on information they already knew.  Once the students can do this, we can then add layers to this assignment and move to level 3 by asking them to research more information about their god/goddess.  I can then move them into level four by introducing multiple sources of information, like a statue or a myth that highlights information about their god/goddess.  The rigor matrix helps teachers expand the thinking level they are working on by breaking down the different depths of that thinking into levels.  The progression provided by the matrix helps teachers create the necessary supports to guide students when they are pushing their own thinking abilities.  Individually, both Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge are important concepts to think about when teachers are creating assignments; combined, they are an even more powerful teaching tool.


It seems that my students are very accomplished in answering questions in level 1 and 2 of Webb's Depth of Knowledge, but getting them to stretch their cognitive skills to move into levels three and four is a continued focus of mine.  I am planning on trying to incorporate more complex tasks with the easier skills like "understanding."  I also think that I will be able to get more out of my students if I am more clear on the different degrees of complexity in what I am asking the students to do.   I have to do a lot of scaffolding for some of my students in order to lead them to making deeper connections with the text we are studying.  Sometimes I feel like I should be teaching math, or a subject I struggle with instead of one that came so easy for me because it can be a challenge to try to break down the thinking process when my own process is sort of automatic.  I don't remember when I became a critical reader; one who questions the writer and is aware of how the write is attempting to manipulate me.  However, these are the skills I am trying to teach and thinking about the complexity of a task, as opposed to the difficulty, I believe will better help me break down the steps needed in order to get to the higher order thinking skills.

I will need to work with my team to create levels of questioning that build to the more complex AND challenging.  Time is the most needed thing needed in order to modify existing lessons to reflect more in depth questioning.  I believe it would benefit my team if we spent some time researching different examples of level four type performance tasks for our students.  One challenge we face at continuation high school is that we get a new group of students every 45 days.  There is no way to predict who will be in my class again for a second, continuous quarter and how many students will be in my class who are brand new to our school.  So whatever we are studying, we have 45 days to teach the material and get the students to a culminating project that will allow them to synthesize what they have learned and present it in a different and unique way.  One solution to this problem, and something we have been talking about, is to collaborate with another department on a PBL to cut the time it takes to research and get through the material more quickly.  This hasn't happened yet, but I am  hopeful that the English department can get something collaborative in action at some point this year.

There are a number of benefits to teaching to Webb's Depth of Knowledge in regards to increase student learning.   For one thing, more challenging questioning is how we teach students to independently think critically over time.  I want to be sure we are graduating citizens who challenge established lines of thought; citizens who process independently and formulate their own opinions after gathering data from relevant sources.  There is so much at stake politically and in many other arenas in today's world where the ability to sift through what is real and what isn't is so challenging, I hope students leave my high school with the ability to own those skills.  Additionally, if the students are comprehending what they are reading more fully, and able to analyze and think about the information in their own unique way, they will do better on state tests, do better in college, and be more successful in their work place.

Assignment 1A: MAT 671

My name is Meagan Blied and I have been teaching for 18 years.  Over those 18 years I can say I have changed my teaching philosophy, style, and focus many times.  Today,  I would describe myself as a teacher who spends a lot of time building relationships with students.  I work to push my students to submit their very best work for that day, week, or quarter.  I am a teacher who believes in second and third chances; I may have been accused of being a softie a time or two.  Being an athletic coach and a parent are probably the two biggest influences on how I develop priorities and the climate in my classroom.  My students have traditionally had difficult experiences in high school and I need to make it clear to them immediately how my classroom is different and why they can be successful if that is the path they choose.  I focus on rewarding my students for what they do, as opposed to punishing them for what they do not do.

I work with 28 at-risk 16 to 18 year olds who have been removed from their home comprehensive high schools because they are behind in credits.  To refer to my population as diverse is an understatement.  I work very hard to be sure that all of my students are being challenged in meaningful ways that will help them continue to move forward academically despite their varied starting points.  I rely on a variety of writing organizers to help my students be successful with writing.  Writing is the most difficult skill my students have to practice and many of my students have never written an essay EVER!  This means that scaffolding and supports must be built in to all of my writing assignments regardless of how big or small.  I also teach annotating text as an important reading tool for the varied reading levels I face each day.  Most of the writing we do is argument writing which makes it easier for me to find articles on the same subject at different reading levels.  This helps me accommodate my diverse classroom.  I am currently working on developing assignments with a variety of end products so students have a choice in how they communicate what they have learned instead of always requiring a formal writing assignment.

My personality test was interesting: I am usually a very strong ISFJ and today I was an ESFJ.  I might be more extroverted now than ever before in my life.  My personality is reflected in my classroom in that establishing a respectful climate is very important and I want the time my students spend in my classroom to be positive and uplifting.  I am very organized and spend a lot of my prep time creating directions for assignments, and objectives that are clearly sequenced for the students so they can articulate what they are learning each day and understand how what they work on today will help them tomorrow.  I build in reflection activities for my students which connects more to the introvert in me that doesn't appear on my most recent test results.  I have incorporated reflection activities more and more as a way to encourage my students to think about their learning success.  I use them at the end of a unit for feedback for myself, but also as a way to make sure my students are considering my feedback when they are writing new academic/behavioral goals for themselves.  Because I tend to be very sensitive to environment myself, I think my students feel safe to discuss their personal lives in a way that can help me know them better while also helping them academically.  I am a caretaker for sure and even though my class has a reputation for being difficult, the relationships that are built outweigh the fear of the rigor.  

The learning style test is a good one for teachers to remember.  I am most familiar with Gardner's learning styles, but the idea is to remember that not everyone is a linguistic learner.  Many of my students are visual learners and it is important for teachers to aspire to reach as many different learning styles as possible.  I tend to write a lot of directions and have to remember to use bullet points instead of paragraphs.  I have gotten a lot better over the years at making my handouts visually appealing to students.  I don't want them overwhelmed right off the bat.  Because I am so heavily sequential, verbal and sensing, I like to learn different ways to process information and both my students and colleagues can teach me that.  I often allow my students to write essays in whatever order makes the most sense to them.  Many student writers prefer to write body paragraphs first and introductions last.  While that doesn't work for my brain, I am always impressed when I see how different the process can be while still having a successful outcome.  I think my coaching taught me early on that there is more than one way to do something right.  Can you imagine what professional baseball players would say if they were all forced to swing the same way?  I am open to the creativity and different learning styles of my students and I offer supports that help the many different learning styles learn and communicate what they know.  I try to hit as many of those styles as possible in a quarter.