Motivation Matters

This program, Citizen Schools, combines a lot of factors we talk about here on Motivation Matters to help boost education in communities across the country. In an effort to decrease the number of dropouts in America, the after-school program hooks up volunteer experts—college students, young professionals, and adults—with middle school students to act as mentors and teachers. The volunteers are encouraged to share specialized skills with the students in hands-on learning environments. This model makes education relevant and fun for students, as well as provides them with support from another adult who wants them to be successful in school.

Started in Boston, Citizen Schools has since expanded to 44 sites in 7 different states, and it's currently in the running to be presented to the President-elect on inauguration day as a top idea to change the country.

Check out this animated film about the program:

Posted by Katie Ash at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy new year, everyone! We here at Motivation Matters wanted to take this opportunity to say thanks for all the thoughtful comments and suggestions we've received on this blog over the past year. As always, we want to make this blog a helpful and relevant resource for you, so if you have any topics that you'd like discussed or explored in the new year or suggestions on what we could do to improve the blog, please email me (kash@epe.org) or Kevin (kbushweller@epe.org) or leave us a comment!

To get the year started on an uplifting note, I thought I'd turn your attention to an AP story about how some schools are using mariachi education classes as a way to entice Hispanic students to stay in school and increase parental involvement.

With soaring dropout rates among Hispanic students, mariachi education programs, long popular in parts of South Texas and California, are springing up in schools across the country to help keep the nation's largest and fastest-growing ethnic group academically engaged.

Mariachi provides a strong cultural link between students and their parents or grandparents, says the article, in a way that traditional band or orchestra classes do not.

Encouraging parental participation and drawing a stronger connection between school and home life are both likely benefits of mariachi education, but I have a slightly harder time believing that mariachi classes will really persuade a student who is considering dropping out of school to stick it out. For a certain few perhaps, but for the vast majority, I don't think these classes are going to solve the dropout crisis.

However, I do think it's important for schools to adjust curriculum, particularly electives, to meet changing interests among their students. Keeping education relevant to students' lives is certainly an effective way of spurring motivation.

What do you think?

Posted by Katie Ash at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Education Week's Stephen Sawchuk has written an interesting story about a massive reform effort going on in New Hampshire designed to personalize students' learning--allowing them more access to alternative education, distance-learning opportunities, and learning opportunities outside of school, like internships and apprenticeships. Educators hope that tying in curriculum to real-world applications will increase student engagement and ultimately boost graduation rates, says the article.

Making learning relevant to students' lives is a huge part of increasing motivation, and I think this is an ambitious and thoughtful effort in that respect, although I do wonder how it will all pan out in reality. As the article mentions, this effort requires a fundamental change in the typical high school institution, which can be very difficult to do. Also, most schools in New Hampshire are fairly small and may not have the resources to devote to these endeavors, according to the article.

Despite some of the practical considerations, I am hopeful about the potential impact of this effort, which puts student motivation right at the heart of academic improvement.

Posted by Katie Ash at 1:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This story from The Sacramento Bee is a great follow-up to yesterday's post about the relationship between motivation, mentorship, and parental involvement.

In the program described in the article, school counselors visit struggling students' homes to sit down with them and their parents and talk about ways to keep them motivated. The house calls encourage a relationship between the school and the parents, and keep everyone in the loop so they can work together to keep the student on track.

I've never heard of something quite like this before, and the results are largely positive, according to the article, which is not surprising to me, considering the program combines a lot of what we talk about here on this blog.

Posted by Katie Ash at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This story in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer highlights a statewide effort in 35 Ohio school districts to help a few hundred freshman boys graduate. The program targets boys who have at least one of four factors that deem students "at-risk" for dropping out--being overage, having failed two major courses in eighth grade, having been suspended, or having been frequently absent.

Each student in the program meets with a "personal motivator" every couple of weeks for encouragement and guidance. Every school that participates also has a "graduation action team" that consists of teachers, parents, clergy, and representatives from the business and social services communities, who meet frequently to monitor the program's progress.

It's too early to tell whether this program will be effective, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on. In my opinion, it can't hurt to put a system in place that requires students to assess their academic progress every two weeks, and getting the community involved is another positive way to keep students motivated.

Posted by Katie Ash at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I read a story yesterday in The (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer about a new middle school program that selects a handful of overage eighth-grade students and puts them into accelerated classes aimed to get them back on track with their high school peers. Since the program targets students who are behind, I was interested to see how the program motivated typically under-performing students to work twice as hard as the average student to catch up.

The article didn't go into the program's methodology in great detail, but one of the students cites smaller class sizes as a reason for his success in the program. Being in a classroom with kids his own age where he is given individualized attention has helped him maintain high grades, he says.

I tend to agree with him, as I'd venture most people would. In high school, I was in the International Baccalaureate program. As a result, my classes generally did not exceed 20 people. Most of the time, the average class size hovered around 10 or 12 kids. In that kind of environment, open discussion was manageable and encouraged, and my teachers knew whether or not each individual student understood the material. I always strove to be well-prepared for classes where I knew I would be expected to participate in class discussions, and it was much easier to be engaged in lessons that depended on each student's input.

Smaller class sizes also came up in our recent post about differing grading scales. As one teacher commented, having a thorough, individualized evaluation method is a much better way of keeping parents, students, and teachers informed about each student's progress than grades, but unfortunately, when each teacher has 150 students a year, there simply isn't enough time to track each student in that much depth.

How much of student motivation is tied up in each kid receiving individual attention? Should smaller class sizes be given greater priority in school systems? How might teachers juggle providing individualized attention to their students with all their other classroom tasks, especially in large classes?

Posted by Katie Ash at 11:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This op-ed in the Nov. 23 edition of the Christian Science Monitor offers pretty powerful advice on how to shut down "dropout factories" and increase high school graduation rates. Here's an excerpt:

"The overwhelming number of dropouts surveyed in the report, "The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts," recognized that graduating is vital to their success. They told us they would have stayed on track to graduate if school had been more relevant, challenging, and supportive of their needs. They point the way toward reform – improved teaching and parental involvement to make school more engaging, a safe and orderly environment, stronger support for struggling students, and schools expecting them to graduate."

This essay really points to the importance of a supportive, motivating community for students. The authors of this piece argue that when kids are engaged in their classes and encouraged by teachers, parents, and their community to work hard, then they are much more likely to do so. But if they are expected to fail, then they won't disappoint.

More often than not, students look to teachers, family members, and friends for support and guidance. It's no surprise that students who have a community to motivate them are more likely to succeed. I feel lucky to have gone through school with two encouraging parents, a network of academically inclined friends, and a whole host of teachers who expected me to perform at (sometimes ridiculously) high levels, but the truth is, too many kids don't have any of those motivators.

So the question is: how do we ensure that all students are given high expectations to live up to? And how do we convince kids they're capable of reaching them?

Posted by Katie Ash at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Motivation Matters reader Bill Betzen of Dallas has requested some feedback about a middle school initiative to improve student motivation and academic achievement. The initiative is called The Middle School Archive Project: Student Motivation and Dropout Prevention and it aims to get kids to think more about what they would like to achieve in the future and how to get there.

In a recent comment on this blog, Bill asked for feedback on what you like or don't like about the initiative and how it might be improved.

So, let's give Bill some help. Check out the initiative and then let's start a discussion here about what is good, or not so good, about the project.

I am sure Bill would appreciate your feedback.

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A Motivation Matters reader alerted me to a thoughtful interview that KMOX Radio in St. Louis recently did with Claire Wyneken of the Wyman Center, which is working to help reduce the dropout rate in the St. Louis area through outreach and a focus on helping teenagers develop better long-term relationships with adults.

Ms. Wyneken had just attended a summit in Washington to talk about the problem of high school dropouts. Educators, researchers, and teenagers attended the summit, and she was particularly struck by some of the comments from teenagers, according to the KMOX interview. "'If people had pushed me a little harder,'" one teenager told her, "'maybe I would have stayed in school.'"

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you like to dig into data about high school graduation rates, check out a new mapping tool on edweek.org that allows you to examine graduation rates for every district in the United States. You can see how well your district stacks up against neighboring districts, your state and other states, and the nation.

If you find some interesting stories in the numbers that might be related to student motivation report back here so we can share it with our readers. The numbers could spark a good discussion.

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 5:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A story in The Dallas Morning News today about a new initiative in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district to improve the success of ninth graders, "Motivation, Extra Help Make Ninth Grade More Manageable," touches on a challenge faced by many school districts across the country: Making sure freshman year is not the beginning of an academic slide into four years of underachievement, or worse, dropping out of school.

The story notes that nearly a quarter of the district's 9th graders were held back after the 2004-05 school year.

It will be interesting to see what impact the initiative has on such statistics.

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The Pew Partnership for Civic Change recently announced the launch of a new campaign to reduce high school dropout rates that I thought was worth noting here.

Titled "Learning to Finish," the campaign is starting this fall in Jacksonville, Fla., and Shreveport, La., with plans to expand to 23 other communities by 2008. The campaign is primarily focused on the transition from middle school to high school, a time when many students fall behind and never catch up.

The effort will bring community members, educators, and researchers together online to share successful strategies and the latest information on what works to motivate potential dropouts to do better in school. Those experts will be able to share their ideas via a special dropout wiki, a Web site that allows registered users to collaborate by contributing their own information or editing existing content.

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)