All students are motivated. When we say kids are unmotivated, it is ridiculous.
Monthly Ed Tip November 2021 - Creating a Stress-Free Learning Environment
This article explores how to enhance the learning environment by making the classroom a safe, secure, and relaxing learning environment for all children by eliminating the fear of making mistakes and failure while improving the classroom social-emotional climate.
“The following words should be banned from all schools because they involve a negative mindset: This student is lazy, is unmotivated, and doesn’t care. If you use these words, it shows you have written off the child. If you see a child as lazy or unmotivated, you are going to treat them differently than if you see them as struggling.” Robert Brooks
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Many of the theories, ideas, and viewpoints expressed in the article are those of Dr. Robert Brooks, a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. He has lectured extensively nationally and internationally and written expansively on the themes of resilience, parenting, family relationships, school climate, and balancing our personal and professional lives. He is the author or co-author of 15 books and has also appeared in several videos pertaining to helping children to become more responsible, self-disciplined, hopeful, and resilient.
All children from birth want to succeed
Brooks cites the philosophy of Robert White, Harvard University psychologist: “In every child from birth there is a wish to succeed and master their environment. And, if not, we have to look at what we can do. If you start with the assumption that students do not want to succeed, it is going to impact on your student and you. I never meet a three or 4-year-old year child who said, “I hope when I go to school I do poorly and fail.”
White concludes that it is a basic assumption of psychology that everyone wants to succeed and receive respect from others.
“All students are motivated. When we say kids are unmotivated, it is ridiculous. You have to be dead to be unmotivated. When we say that students are unmotivated, what we are really saying is that they are not doing what we want them to do,” Brooks argues.
As you read through the article, remember that like adults, young people do not like to assume responsibilities for failure and weakness. They will rationalize, deny, project, or excuse, anything to avoid the uncomfortable feeling that comes from knowing one has been wrong or is wrong.
One of Brooks’ recurring themes is the idea of a person’s mindset. Brooks defines mindsets as “assumptions and expectations we have for ourselves and others that guide our teaching practices and our interactions with students, parents, and colleagues.”
Below are three mindsets advocated by Robert Brooks to ensure that all students experience a stress-free leaning environment.
1. Fear of failure: What happens to people when they enter a situation and they already feel that they can’t succeed? They start to give up, get angry and depressed.
In the classroom, educators must recognize that for unsuccessful learners learning can be tough, risky and not enjoyable. These learners feel vulnerable due to many factors such as the unpredictable consequences of teacher and peer interactions, information overload, and the stress caused by the fear of failure.
All these factors make the student’s outlook on learning bleak at best while making the cost of failure extremely high due to the perceived humiliation from their peers for their mistakes.
As a result of this fear, these students will not be open to risk-taking of any kind such as exploring new ideas/learning techniques, trying anything outside their comfort zone that contain the possibility of failure, or tasks that require a large investment of time.
In his book Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, cognitive scientist Dan Willingham writes that “avoiding failure is a robustly strong motive, several times stronger than the motive to obtain an objectively similar level of positive success or reward. This is supported by two well-validated cognitive principles: whenever called on to commit to decisions we are risk-averse and bad is stronger than good.”
Larry Brendtro, Martin Brokenleg, Steve Van Bocken write in Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future that “the fear of failure is stronger than the motivation to achieve. For some struggling students, they have learned to expect failure and seek to escape further shame and embarrassment by working very hard at avoiding work. They are convinced that failure is never as bitter as if one does not try.”
Adolescent’s Prayer: Dear God, please do not let me be embarrassed or humiliated today.
How does this manifest itself in students? For teenage boys, it is often said that it is better for them to appear bad than to appear stupid. For girls, the adage maintains that the mouth and/or attitude occasionally used is to keep hidden their insecurities and true feelings.
The struggling learners must believe that their efforts will result in learning. At times, they question why should they put the effort into learning when they are not going to be successful. For these children, many times it is not an issue of effort but an issue in believing that their efforts will lead somewhere. Unsuccessful learners must learn they will not be judged harshly or accused of being stupid when they make a mistake. When the fear of humiliation as a result of failure is removed a student will take the appropriate risk to learn.
Competent and optimistic children see the world differently than those who are not optimistic. They never blame the situation, other people, or themselves. They ask what is it that they can do differently that can change the situation. Competent people know they are going to fail and fall on their face, but will expect success, and learn to surmount adversity.
Successful, competent, and optimistic learners already believe that if they put in the effort, they will learn, and that the actual moment of learning will result in high levels of reward and personal satisfaction. This is part of feeling competent and optimistic.
Sometimes we can be overly optimistic believing we are the authors of our own lives and that nothing can stop us until something that you have no control over just happens to us.
2. The Fear Of Making a Mistake: The 800-pound Elephant in the Classroom:
One of the greatest obstacles to learning is the fear of making mistakes and the resultant feelings of embarrassment and/or humiliation.
This issue that must be addressed to help the unsuccessful learners realize that making mistakes are part of the learning process and are expected and accepted. Many students equate making mistakes with feeling humiliated and consequently will avoid learning tasks that are challenging and are unwilling to step outside their comfort zone. The struggling learners view mistakes as things they cannot control and like a rock around the neck that weighs them down. The fear of making a mistake is one of the greatest impediments to learning that students face. For children as well as adults, when one feels they cannot succeed, they are not going to be motivated to learn.
As compensating behaviors, stressed students often become bullies, quit at tasks, or resort to saying the work is dumb rather than engage in a learning activity. Furthermore, in order to avoid the humiliation from making a mistake, many adolescents would rather appear to be the “bad boy in class” rather than appear stupid.
One of the most powerful approaches for reinforcing a feeling of competence in students is to lessen their fear of failure. So how can teachers minimize children’s’ fear of making mistakes and resulting humiliation while ensuring them that mistakes are accepted and an expected part of the learning process?
Brooks believes that all students want to be successful and if a student is not learning, educators must ask how they can adjust their teaching style and instructional material to meet the student’s needs. Looking at the issue from another angle, the question becomes how do educators create a motivating environment where the students want to work with us and not against us?
The best way to overcome students’ fear of failure is to openly address it with students. A technique endorsed by Brooks is having teachers ask their class at the beginning of the school year, “Who feels they are going to make a mistake and not understand something in class this year?” Before any students can respond, the teacher raises their hand and talks about past mistakes they have made in certain situations. Also helpful is when teachers share some of their own anxieties and experiences about making mistakes when they were students.
Communicate to the class about the times you were embarrassed in school by a teacher. Discussing your past mistakes help students begin to trust the learning process, become more motivated to take learning risks, and to feel a sense of confidence and competency resulting in increased learning. In these ways the fear of failure and humiliation are actively addressed enabling students to begin trusting the learning process.
3. The social-emotional needs of students
“Every child you work with knows how you feel about them and you can’t hide that feeling plus this feeling is going to play a major role because your expectations and assumptions guide what you do.” Robert Brooks
Educators should believe that attending to the social-emotional needs of students is not an “extra-curriculum” that draws time away from teaching academic subjects. This dichotomy has been fueled, in part, by the emergence of high stakes testing and an emphasis on accountability, contends Brooks.
When asked about the task of attending to these needs, the frequently heard teachers’ comments are that “we barely have time to get through the assigned curriculum and we really don’t have time to focus on anything else.”
A student’s sense of belonging, security, and self-confidence in the classroom provides the scaffolding that supports the foundation for enhancing learning, motivation, self-discipline, responsibility, and the ability to deal more effectively with obstacles and mistakes (Brooks, 1991, 224).
One exercise to enable this feeling is to encourage educators to reflect on their own teachers and reflect on those from whom they learned most effectively. Frequently, teachers select teachers who supported the emotional well-being of students and were interested in the “whole child.”
An intricate part of attending to the social-emotional needs of students is for educators to recognize that if they are to relate effectively to students, they must be empathic, always attempting to perceive the world through the eyes of the students.
Brooks adamantly believes that empathic educators are able to place themselves in the shoes of their students and others and perceive the world through their eyes (Brooks, 1998). Goleman (1995) highlights empathy as a major component of emotional intelligence.
Being empathic invites educators to ask, “would I want anyone to say or do to me what I have just said or done to this student (or colleague or parent), and what is my goal?” Am I saying or doing these things in a way that my students will most likely hear and respond constructively to them?”
For instance, a teacher might try to motivate a student by exhorting a student to “try harder.” Students frequently view this statement as accusatory and judgmental, and when students feel accused, they are less prone to be cooperative.
When we tell children to try harder, how do we know that they did not try their hardest or are putting in their best effort? One of Brooks’ most incredulous report card comments is “if you tried harder, you would do better.” Mockingly, Brooks wonders who wouldn’t want to do better?
Conversely, what would the teacher feeling be if their principal said to them “If you tried a little harder in class you wouldn’t have this problem.”
Below are three recommended exercises by Brooks to prompt teachers to gain a realistic picture of how they are perceived by students.
First exercise
Have teachers think of a teacher they liked and ones they did not like when they were students and then to describe each in several words.
Next. “Just as you have words to describe your teachers, your students have words to describe you. What words would you hope your students used to describe you?”
Next. “What have you done in the past month that they are likely to use these words?”
Next, “What words would they actually use to describe you?”
Next. “How close would the words you hope they use parallel the words they would actually use?”
Second exercise.
“Of all the memories you have as a student, what is one of your favorite ones, something that a teacher or school administrator said, or did that boast your motivation and self-dignity?
Of all the memories you have as a student, what is one of your worst ones, something that a teacher or school administrator said, or did that lessen your motivation and self-dignity?
As you reflect upon both your positive and negative memories of school, what did you learn from both and do you use these memories as a guide to what you are doing with your students today?
Third exercise
“What memories are my students taking from their interactions with me? Are they the memories I would like them to take? If not, what must I change so that the memories will be in accord with the memories I hope they take?’
Brooks expounds that “the teacher’s skills, knowledge of the field, curriculum planning, lecturing, selecting books and all other learning aides are peripheral to the learning experience because at the very crux of the learning experience is the relationship that exists between the teacher and the learner. And this relationship must be characterized by realness, valuing, and empathy. Children will behave the way they feel and relationships make or break it for borderline learners in our classrooms.”
In summary, educators must appreciate that the foundation for successful learning and a safe and secure classroom climate is the relationship that teachers forge with students. They must strive to create a stress-free learning classroom where students feel safe and secure including a positive classroom environment with affirmative teacher-student relationships without the fear of failure and making mistakes. Teachers need to understand that the biology of emotions have a huge impact on learning and to recognize that students cannot focus on the curriculum unless they feel physically safe and emotionally secure, perceive that teachers care about them, respect them, and believe they can learn and succeed.