Motivate Youth

Should We End Teacher Inservice?

2017-03-16T09:22:00.002-05:00

Recently, the Center for American Progress, a left leaning think tank organization, did some really good analysis on how school day irregularities affect working parents and the economy. The study rightly points out that school hours and working hours misalign, causing child-care headaches and employment issues for parents. They advocate for expansion of afterschool programs and better scheduling. They also advocate this:

Districts should stop the practice of full-day school closures for professional development. Instead, they should utilize high-quality professional development strategies that can be embedded throughout the school day, including teacher collaboration and planning time, individualized coaching, classroom observations, evaluations from outside experts, and trainings on data analysis. Districts could also run citywide leadership development events during nonschool hours. They could also explore the use of online platforms, such as Knowledge Delivery Systems, for professional development and professional learning among educators, which would reduce the need for full-day closures for these purposes.

Motivate Youth provides individualized coaching designed to run concurrently with the school day, not necessarily because it creates less inservice days, but rather because it is the most effective way to deliver professional development. Many schools, however, do not provide professional development during inservice days (they often supply it is small chunks afters school, or allow teachers to find their own development on weekend or summer days.) If schools are using inservice days to provide professional development, they should look toward embedded development programs because they are the most effective. Inservice days, then could be eliminated, or used to do large reorganization and planning projects that require full day, full team participation.

Why We Work With Principals and Adminstrators

2016-12-13T09:48:00.000-06:00

Many organizations provide professional development and consulting to teachers in an effort to improve classroom learning. Motivate Youth, however, goes beyond this and focuses on working with administrators and principals, whose continuing development is often overlooked. Interestingly, this is also a focus of the George W. Bush institute, who has commissioned studies evaluating the impact of effective principals. Here are some of their findings:

Principals may account for up to 25 percent of a school’s impact on student learning. Among school-related factors, principals are second only to classroom teaching when it comes to impact on student learning. In fact, a 2013 Education Next report found that “highly effective principals raise the achievement.”

A principal’s impact is even greater in high poverty schools. The impact on achievement can be even greater in schools serving disadvantaged students, according to the same article above, which means it’s even more crucial to attract and retain high-quality principals in schools where the need may be greatest.

Highly effective principals can increase student scores by up to 10 percentile points in just one year. Research strongly suggests that principals are key to improving a school’s performance.

91% of teachers say leadership is key to improving student achievement. And effective principals recruit and retain effective teachers. Effective teachers – the most important in-school factor on a child’s educational success – tend to leave under ineffective principals, while poor quality instructors have been shown leave under high-quality school leadership.

Motivate Youth focuses on one key aspect of principal development: their ability to motivate teachers through assessment. Principals are under a lot of pressure to succeed, and that pressure often leads to strict, authoritarian, and intensely negative teacher assessments that discourage autonomy and personal growth. For teachers, this can be a motivation killer.

Instead, the best principals think of themselves as coaches, guiding teachers to adopt new strategies while respecting their input and autonomy. These coaching skills are rarely taught in any principal education program, so Motivate Youth is proud to step up and fill this critical need.

How Should Teachers Get Their Professional Development?

2016-11-29T13:32:00.003-06:00

For a few years now, Motivate Youth has provided professional development for teachers and youth workers in a very typical way. We go to conferences or to individual organizations and give presentations. There are slideshows. There are stories of success. We do interactive activities and problem solving. Questions are asked and answered.

By the end of the day, teachers go home with a few new tools in their toolbox. It helps teachers a little, but is it enough? Is this the most efficient way to provide professional development? The center for public education has several key findings:

The largest struggle for teachers is not learning new approaches to teaching but implementing them.

In order to truly change practices, professional development should occur over time and preferably be ongoing.

Coaches/mentors are found to be highly effective in helping teachers implement a new skill.

The full report features cited research and makes an excellent argument. Professional development is most effective when it happens in their work environment, and is ongoing. This is one reason why Motivate Youth has a new focus on consulting. We want to train teachers and administrators where they work, integrating our expertise with theirs. Motivate Youth consultants are experts in motivation strategies, but teachers, principals and youth workers are the experts on their schools and their students.

In our effort to help teachers be their best, the professionals at Motivate Youth will act less like professors, and more like coaches. We think it's a strategy that can make lasting change.

Our New Website

2016-11-28T14:35:00.001-06:00

Welcome to our new website! As we grow, Motivate Youth is undergoing some exciting new changes, and the redesigned website reflects that. It's our goal to make motivateyouth.org informative for those looking for education solutions. We specialize in motivational strategies to help create fun and productive classrooms. If you're a teacher looking for better relationships with your students, or an administrator who wants to build a positive working environment, we hope to provide what you are looking for!

Bratwurst Sale 2016!

2016-04-01T08:50:00.005-05:00

The Bratwurst Fundraiser is back! This is your chance to buy some tasty brats and make a difference in the lives of Madison’s youth.

Motivate Youth is launching a brand new initiative called The Motivation Project. Our goal is to motivate 200 Dane County youth through one-on-one meetings with highly trained adults. Research indicates that these productive motivational meetings can help a student improve their behavior, their grades, and their happiness.

Every $20 purchase helps us pay for one more motivational meeting. That’s direct funding to help kids in our area, and brats direct to you from Smith Bros. Meats in Colby, WI.

There are three ways you can help:

Buy brats online at www.motivateyouth.org/p/brats.html Brats can be picked up in Madison in June, or delivered to anywhere in Dane County.

Download the Bratwurst Fundraiser Sign Up Sheet and bring it to your work. Just submit the order to aaron@motivateyouth.org at the end of the month. Brat orders over $100 will be delivered to your work for free.

Contact aaron@motivateyouth.org to place an order.

Motivate Youth and The Motivation Project relies heavily on volunteers and individual contributions to meet our goals. Thank you for helping us build student motivation in Dane County and across the country!

Lessons Learned from #NAA16

2016-03-30T12:21:00.000-05:00

Motivate Youth recently presented “Introduction to Motivation Interviewing,” at the National Afterschool Association’s National Conference in Orlando, Florida. It’s our most popular training, and at the same time our most unpredictable, because it contains a lot of unscripted role-play and improvisation.

As a presenter, the unscripted nature of the training allows me to learn as new problems are introduced. At the NAA training, a youth worker presented a problem where a parent was defending her child’s misbehavior. The parent believed the child instead of the after-school staff. The discussion between the staff member and the parent turned into an argument without a resolution.

This type of stand off happens, and there isn’t an iron clad way to handle it. As we explored how the conversation could have gone better, we made a key discovery: In the actual conversation between the parent and the staff person, the child was present the entire time. This probably shaped the entire conversation, and forced everyone involved to be a little less forthright.

Our trainings focus heavily on the futility of argument and ways to avoid it, but something we probably don’t emphasize enough is the importance of one-on-one conversations. Any time a third person is present, no matter who it is, we run the risk that the conversations won’t be in earnest. In our case, the parent may have been defending the child because the child was right there. It’s also possible that the child’s presence caused the tone of the staff worker to change, making the parent more defensive. Any time and extra person is present, many more variables are added, and that can impede efforts to resolve disputes.

Of course, one-on-one time is extremely hard to find in our busy afterschool worlds. Yet, if we really try, I believe we can make these one-on-one conversations happen more often. After all, nothing is a bigger time waste than a having an unproductive argument or a conversation that doesn’t lead toward resolution.

Prizes May Not Provide the Motivation We are Looking For

2015-06-30T15:39:00.003-05:00

NPR recently summarized an excellent and important study that tracked an incentive program in India. Third grade students were given a prize just for meeting an attendance goal. The schools are run by the non-profit Gyan Shala and are considered quality schools, even though they are located in the poorest parts of India. Attendance is a real problem for the schools, and they hoped a simple prize to boost attendance would be a quick fix. Indeed the fix was quick, but also short lived. During the prize period, students were about twice as likely to come as before, which is great. Then the giveaway period ended, and the results were disheartening:

• Kids whose attendance rate was highest in the class before the reward program: They reverted to their baseline level.

• Kids whose attendance rate was lowest but managed to up their attendance enough to win the prize: After the program was over, these kids also reverted to their lower baseline level.

• Kids whose attendance rate was lowest to start off with and who did not improve enough to qualify for the reward. In other words, they failed the challenge: More than 60 percent of the lowest attenders fell into this category. For them, the aftermath was grim. They were now only about one-fourth as likely to show up for class as they had been before the reward scheme was introduced.

Why did so many kids end up with not just reverting, but having worse attendance? The researchers speculate that the students who failed to win the prize lost their motivation because the program underscored their low attendance. I believe we can take this one step further.

When we fail to achieve a goal, our confidence takes a hit and we often decide that the goal is out of reach. This is a shame, because it is often the struggle to achieve that is best for us, not the achievement itself. Let me show you what I mean through an example:

Joe is out of shape but wants to be healthier. “My goal is to run a marathon one year from now,” says Joe. That’s a big goal, but he thinks he can do it. He begins training, running every day, getting in better shape. Yet, he just can seem to run more than 5 miles a day. He has asthma attacks. He gets injured. His body can’t take it. As the Marathon approaches, he realizes he can’t do it, and gives up. “I’m just not capable of distance running,” says Joe. “I have to quit.” Joe decides that running wasn’t meant for him. Even though he is healthier and in the best shape of his life, he stops running all together. He goes back to the couch.

He gave up trying to be good because he couldn’t be great.

When we rely too much on prizes or goals as our motivation, that motivation ultimately crumbles when we fail. Instead of focusing on the marathon, Joe should have spent more time being mindful of how he enjoyed running and how he liked feeling healthy. If Joe payed more attention to Joe the Happy Runner, and less attention to Joe the Wannabe Marathoner, he might still be running today.

The same is true of the students in this program. Instead of giving out prizes, the school would do much better to congratulate the students every day they come, and encourage them to think about what they enjoy in school. As students start to recognize what they like about school, they become more motivated to attend. Its motivation that doesn’t come from a prize, but rather from within. They recognize themselves as good students doing what good students do – they go to school.

Motivate Youth Workshop Named 'Top 25'

2015-05-19T12:27:00.001-05:00

Motivate Youth’s presentation, “Introduction to Motivational Interviewing,” was recently named a Top 25 workshop by the National Afterschool Association.

The achievement is notable, as this was Motivate Youth’s first presentation at the NAA convention, which features hundreds of workshops and thousands of attendees.

“The workshop was well received because the material is solid,” said Aaron Romens, Executive Director of Motivate Youth. “Motivational interviewing is scientifically proven to be effective, and at the same time, intuitive for youth workers, because it builds on the skills and values they already possess.”

Motivate Youth provides training in motivational interviewing for afterschool youth professionals. Through a network of partnerships, Motivate Youth is often able to provide this training at a low cost or free.

Our Bratwurst Fundraiser

2015-03-02T09:19:00.000-06:00

Motivate Youth's mission is to foster motivation in youth through the professional development of the adults that work with them. This means we train youth workers, and very often we do it for free through our scholarship program.

Right now, Motivate Youth is selling delicious bratwursts in support of our scholarship fund. With every $10 donation comes a quality package of specialty bratwursts from Smith Bros. Meats in Colby, WI. All proceeds go directly to our scholarship fund, which allows youth programs to get trained in advanced motivational approaches for free.

If you can, please consider buying some brats (they are literally the tastiest sausages on earth) or simply donate to the fund. It's our goal to make this training as accessible as possible, and your donation makes that happen.

-Aaron

Our Students Don't Have to be Like Malala

2014-12-09T17:08:00.000-06:00

Malala Yousafzai is an inspiration, no doubt. Her struggle to get an education in the face of terror is worthy of every accolade she has received, including the Nobel Prize. She is an amazing human being, and Huffington Post columnist Vicki Cobb says that her story could be a great motivational tool for students in our country. From HuffPo:

How can we motivate students to fight for their own interests in acquiring an education? How can we inspire them to do the hard work needed? Maybe they need to hear Malala speak. Please do your part to share her message with the children in your life.

This might work for some students, but it won't work for most. Stories of amazing people doing amazing things don't necessarily inspire regular people to do regular things. Instead, it can make us feel ashamed for not wanting to do what we know we should.
In reality, it's normal to want to shirk our regular tasks. It too is natural for students to not want to go to school sometimes. It's okay for them to sometimes feel bored while at school. Frustrated too. I bet even Malala feels bored and frustrated occasionally, and these, too, are obstacles she has to overcome every day.
Talking about these everyday obstacles, and not just the extraordinary ones, will help students connect with Malala. Not every student has to take on the Taliban in order to get an education, but every student, including Malala, has to go to class, work hard and study. That's a struggle we all share.

Being in School vs Belonging in School

2014-12-03T17:54:00.000-06:00

An article on Quartz yesterday discusses the underlying issues that prevent poorer students from succeeding and it touches on the idea of belonging. Even great schools can have a hard time educating students from underserved backgrounds if they can't convince the students that they belong there. All of our students need great educational opportunities, but they need more than that. They also need an appreciation for knowledge and the confidence that they belong. We can't just open doors for students; we need to invite them in. Here's the article:

America doesn't have an education problem, it has a class problem (Quartz).

It's All About Autonomy

2014-10-23T15:34:00.000-05:00

The QKED Mind/Shift blog has a great summary of the current intrinsic/extrinsic motivator debate, and how many educators are finding success when they give their students autonomy. Here is a clip:

The same subtle interplay between motivation and rewards is also at work when it comes to education and learning, say Schwartz and Wrzesniewski. Rewarding students for getting their schoolwork done with prizes, snacks and even grades, as most schools do, can have the unintended effect of dismantling a child’s drive to learn for its own sake. The intrinsic rewards that come from exploring interests in depth, and mastering difficult concepts and problems, can be smothered by a reward system that focuses on grades, say, rather than understanding. It also signals what’s important to the teachers. “When you dangle Burger King in front of kids’ noses, you are telling them what kind of consequence matters, and what motive to pay attention to,” Schwartz says. “And education will suffer.”

What is interesting about this is the idea that extrinsic rewards take away the autonomy of our students. Simply put, maybe we shouldn't be telling our kids how to feel rewarded, and instead we should give the the autonomy to find their own reward.

Curiosity Makes Us Better at Learning Everything (Including the Boring Stuff)

2014-10-08T15:54:00.000-05:00

It's no surprise that the more curious we are about something, the better we are at learning about it. However, a new study published in Neuron has findings that go beyond that:

More surprising, however, was that once their curiosity was aroused, they showed better learning of entirely unrelated information... that they encountered but were not necessarily curious about. People were also better able to retain the information learned during a curious state across a 24-hour delay.

Curiosity is a form of intrinsic motivation, which means we get a rewarding feeling just by learning about what interests us. According to this study, curiosity also creates a state of mind where we feel rewarded no matter what we are learning about. That means students will learn more and retain more information about anything, as long as they are kept in a curious state.

As teachers and youth workers, this means we must talk to our students and learn what makes them curious. Then we can plan lessons around that curiosity, allowing them to absorb extra -- even unrelated -- information and feel good about everything they learned.

Trainings Available

2014-10-08T10:56:00.000-05:00

Motivate Youth is pleased to introduce our new trainings in Motivational Interviewing (MI). Our four hour-long trainings cover the principles of MI and apply them to youth work. The practical, interactive trainings can be highly customized to meet any organization's needs.

MI has been scientifically shown to be an effective approach to increasing the grades of middle school students. These short, simple conversations between adults and youth can help children and teens find their internal motivation, and use that to succeed in school.

Right now, many of the trainings are available for free or at a reduced cost. For more information, please contact Aaron Romens at aaron@motivateyouth.org.