Bonus Episode: Notes from Disengaged Brains and Motivation by Peps McCrea

My intent the week before the conference was to attend this session as I had just finished his book, Motivated Teaching (highly recommend - packs a lot of punch in a short number of pages).  Then, the organizers moved John Almarode's session to the same time slot.  When John is an option, I opt for John.  His magic is not something that translates to video; you have to be in the room to get the most out of it.  Thanks to the recordings on the conference app, I can watch this session (and any other that I want) today.  

Option 3 - Disengaged Brains & Motivation (K-12): Motivated Teaching: Harnessing the Science of Motivation to Boost Attention and Effort by Peps McCrea

This is based on as strongly-evidenced research as possible.  

Remember Brain-Gym?  It was supposed to connect the left and right sides of your brain and make your students learn more.  Sadly, it didn't work out, but it can be good activities for waking your students up.

1. Motivation is a system for allocating attention.
2. It is a specific response to a situation, not a general trait.
3. It is not a given.
4. It is a heavily unconscious process.
5. Intrinsic drivers are more sustainable than extrinsic drivers.

Motivation is a system for allocating attention.

There are so many things competing for your attention.  Your brain needs a way to triage the opportunities as it looks at all the options.  

It is a specific response to a situation, not a general trait.

To describe a student as unmotivated isn't really fair.  They are motivated about some things and not others.  Motivation levels differ massively depending on the situation you find yourself in.  It's not a character trait.  The good news is that means we have some influence over that by changing the condition

Motivation is not a given

Longitudinal studies find that academic motivation declines over a student's career, especially low between 11 and 14.

It is a heavily unconscious process.

Deciding whether to pay attention to the teacher, the phone, or something else in the room is not really a conscious decision.  That's why sometimes, you find yourself looking at something you didn't realize you were looking at or catch yourself daydreaming.  You didn't say, "I'm going to daydream now.  Let's turn that on."

Intrinsic drivers are more sustainable than extrinsic drivers.

Stickers, candy, etc. may work for a moment, but it is not a sustainable source of motivation over the long term.  Motivation return to baseline when the extrinsic driver is removed.  For those who had an intrinsic motivation to begin with will become even less motivated when the extrinsic driver is removed.  Their brain has exchanged the original motivator with the candy, and it doesn't come back when the candy is removed.

Practical Strategies

• Secure Success - Get students a win as early as possible on something that was difficult enough to make the success valuable.  What students perceive as success may not be the same as what we perceive it to be, so it is good to help them understand what success looks like.  We can't necessarily adapt to their vision of it (because it may be a toxic thing like beating their peers or never getting anything wrong on the first try), but just telling them what we would view as successful upfront may help.
• Run Routines - This may not seem like it has anything to do with motivation, but it helps the brain have fewer things competing for attention if they already know what to do because it is automated.  There is now more attention available for what they are learning instead of how.  Project directions on any new routine.  (My thought:  This is a working memory issue.)
• Nudge Norms - Norms are more powerful than rules.  (Remembering the Brain games video from one of the keynote speakers)  Getting your whole class on the same page allows the brain to take a shortcut - just do what everyone else is doing.  This is why some kids behave better at school than at home because social norms work only in groups.  The more groups the better.  (Safety in numbers). It's why we stand in line and don't drive on the shoulder.  It's why after the first person asks to go the bathroom, suddenly everyone has to go.  Raise the visibility of students participating in your desired behavior.  Talk more about what you want them to do than what you don't want them to do (Don't say something like, "Most of you didn't do your homework" because you establish the undesirable thing as a social norm.)  Teachers having consistent social norms will cause them to be amplified.
• Sense of Belonging - The social norms are only powerful if a student feels they belong in that group.  (Recycling example:  It works better if the stated statistic is closer to you because you identify with that group more.  Finding common ground in the classroom increases the feeling of belonging.  Find something small that DEFINES you as a group (it could be as simple as being "the red team" or something deeper like "we all love . . ."
• Building Buy-in - This doesn't mean you have to ask them what they want to learn; you wouldn't trust a doctor if he said "What do you want your diagnosis to be?"  We can work in small choices, but we will make the big decisions about how they learn and then invest our energy in building buy-in.  Explain why you have made the choice you made and then ask for assent.  

Metamotivation - a person's monitoring of their own motivation along with some skills of how to boost it when it is flagging