My school has been struggling with something, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's been every school I've worked at. It's a lack of a sense of urgency among many students to finish a task. And I'm not talking about a minority of students - even my strongest students who have on grade-level literacy, a strong ability to reason and critically think, and who perform well on timed, independent tests are ones who don't show a sense of urgency. Where does this come from? Was it always like this?
Asking "was it always like this?" is akin to saying "Kids these days...". We all need to realize that our experience is not that of Gen Z students, especially when we are from a different demographic background as them. I have a really biased point of view, because I have ADHD so my mind is always working on something, but I also was prescribed Ritalin from 2nd to 8th grade, which kept me focused on tasks, so I was a relatively successful student. By middle school and continuing in high school, I was placed in high-level, tracked classes, where the atmosphere was one of friendly competition, especially among the boys. We all tried to demonstrate our academic prowess to each other and to our teachers, to show that we deserved to be there. But also, we were all white (still are!), upper-middle class students who believed in the meritocracy as dogma, that the harder we worked, the more successful we would be. It helped that Bill Gates was a legend in the 1990s - as a nerd who used his intelligence to earn immense wealth. Beyond this, the Internet was still new, so there was still a sense of scarcity when it came to knowledge. What I mean by this was that if you didn't learn it in class, the next best option was a more boring textbook or encyclopedia (even digitally, encyclopedias were boring back then). Also, the volume of assignments given to us created a constant work flow that couldn't afford breaks or gaps.
So what does this mean for the students I teach? The meritocracy is bullshit for most students and people in general, so that can't be a motivator. The Internet has created a sense of infinite time for learning, that even if you don't learn it now, it can be learned later, so we're working against this. What still remains in our zone of control?
1) "Can I finish it for homework?" If students can finish classwork at home, it creates an incentive to not work during class. Because when you're in class, all your friends are there. You want to talk to them. And if you can do the class work at home, and earn the same grade as doing it during class, but your friends are not at home with you, then why not spend class time talking with friends instead of working? The incentives all run counter to urgency.
2) "Can I hand it in late?" If students can hand in work after a due date, then the due date is not a due date. The due date becomes a lie. And lying to students sends them mixed messages. If one due date suddenly is flexible, then all of them are. And now, a student knows that as long as they ask, demand, whine, complain to a principal, and/or get their parent to advocate for them, they don't need to work urgently, because any deadline can be extended. Are we are preparing them for a world without deadlines? Or are we preparing them for a world where missing a deadline might result in missed opportunities, late fees, diminished respect, and often wasted money? We need to think about how our actions condition students to think about the world and systems therein.
3) "I'm not in the mood." When we teach students who may be suffering from fatigue, trauma, malnutrition, hunger, or any other issue that limits learning, it's important to recognize - and have students themselves recognize - why they aren't working. There are legitimate reasons, but it's often hard to tease this out. We all know how easy it is for a child to learn how to avoid responsibilities because they don't want to, rather than because they can't. We have lots of examples of lazy, excuse-prone adults who weasel out of responsibilities. So with students, we need to establish a rapport build on honesty and vulnerability, so both teacher and student can acknowledge whether a lack of urgency is due to a need or a want.
4) Large class sizes. When teachers have large class sizes, more work needs to be graded. And this creates an incentive for teachers to be comfortable with any policy that result in fewer students completing assignments. If fewer students have a sense of urgency, and thus fewer students complete assignments, then now the teacher doesn't need to grade as many assignments, and that makes their life less busy and stressful, since teachers don't get paid to grade. This creates an incentive to not fix a policy that results in less urgency for students to complete work. So teachers need to find ways to more briskly give feedback so that creating a sense of urgency among students doesn't lead to teacher burnout.
5) "This is too much work." Assigning a lot of tasks is vital for students if we want to prepare them for adulthood which is also filled with a lot of tasks. When I think of the amount of work that it takes to be an adult ("adulting"), I often get very overwhelmed. But teaching students to handle the overwhelming nature of adulthood is our job, and we can't shield them from this. As they move from younger grades into older ones, the workload should definitely increase, but it should also become more relevant, authentic, and meaningful for students. If we make our students do meaningful, relevant tasks, that require more of them than reinforcing facts which are useless outside of standardized tests and bar trivia, then they will do more of the work. Imagine assignments that taught students
That's the end of my rant for today. I hope teachers can take some of this and implement it successfully, for I fear that students who can't learn urgently now are dooming themselves to not having the skills to learn urgently later. And it's out duty to set them up for success.
Asking "was it always like this?" is akin to saying "Kids these days...". We all need to realize that our experience is not that of Gen Z students, especially when we are from a different demographic background as them. I have a really biased point of view, because I have ADHD so my mind is always working on something, but I also was prescribed Ritalin from 2nd to 8th grade, which kept me focused on tasks, so I was a relatively successful student. By middle school and continuing in high school, I was placed in high-level, tracked classes, where the atmosphere was one of friendly competition, especially among the boys. We all tried to demonstrate our academic prowess to each other and to our teachers, to show that we deserved to be there. But also, we were all white (still are!), upper-middle class students who believed in the meritocracy as dogma, that the harder we worked, the more successful we would be. It helped that Bill Gates was a legend in the 1990s - as a nerd who used his intelligence to earn immense wealth. Beyond this, the Internet was still new, so there was still a sense of scarcity when it came to knowledge. What I mean by this was that if you didn't learn it in class, the next best option was a more boring textbook or encyclopedia (even digitally, encyclopedias were boring back then). Also, the volume of assignments given to us created a constant work flow that couldn't afford breaks or gaps.
So what does this mean for the students I teach? The meritocracy is bullshit for most students and people in general, so that can't be a motivator. The Internet has created a sense of infinite time for learning, that even if you don't learn it now, it can be learned later, so we're working against this. What still remains in our zone of control?
1) "Can I finish it for homework?" If students can finish classwork at home, it creates an incentive to not work during class. Because when you're in class, all your friends are there. You want to talk to them. And if you can do the class work at home, and earn the same grade as doing it during class, but your friends are not at home with you, then why not spend class time talking with friends instead of working? The incentives all run counter to urgency.
2) "Can I hand it in late?" If students can hand in work after a due date, then the due date is not a due date. The due date becomes a lie. And lying to students sends them mixed messages. If one due date suddenly is flexible, then all of them are. And now, a student knows that as long as they ask, demand, whine, complain to a principal, and/or get their parent to advocate for them, they don't need to work urgently, because any deadline can be extended. Are we are preparing them for a world without deadlines? Or are we preparing them for a world where missing a deadline might result in missed opportunities, late fees, diminished respect, and often wasted money? We need to think about how our actions condition students to think about the world and systems therein.
3) "I'm not in the mood." When we teach students who may be suffering from fatigue, trauma, malnutrition, hunger, or any other issue that limits learning, it's important to recognize - and have students themselves recognize - why they aren't working. There are legitimate reasons, but it's often hard to tease this out. We all know how easy it is for a child to learn how to avoid responsibilities because they don't want to, rather than because they can't. We have lots of examples of lazy, excuse-prone adults who weasel out of responsibilities. So with students, we need to establish a rapport build on honesty and vulnerability, so both teacher and student can acknowledge whether a lack of urgency is due to a need or a want.
4) Large class sizes. When teachers have large class sizes, more work needs to be graded. And this creates an incentive for teachers to be comfortable with any policy that result in fewer students completing assignments. If fewer students have a sense of urgency, and thus fewer students complete assignments, then now the teacher doesn't need to grade as many assignments, and that makes their life less busy and stressful, since teachers don't get paid to grade. This creates an incentive to not fix a policy that results in less urgency for students to complete work. So teachers need to find ways to more briskly give feedback so that creating a sense of urgency among students doesn't lead to teacher burnout.
5) "This is too much work." Assigning a lot of tasks is vital for students if we want to prepare them for adulthood which is also filled with a lot of tasks. When I think of the amount of work that it takes to be an adult ("adulting"), I often get very overwhelmed. But teaching students to handle the overwhelming nature of adulthood is our job, and we can't shield them from this. As they move from younger grades into older ones, the workload should definitely increase, but it should also become more relevant, authentic, and meaningful for students. If we make our students do meaningful, relevant tasks, that require more of them than reinforcing facts which are useless outside of standardized tests and bar trivia, then they will do more of the work. Imagine assignments that taught students
- media literacy and how to fact-check on the Internet
- about their own physiology and how it is affected by nutrition, chemicals, and exercise
- about their own home/neighborhood and how it's affected by architectural design, engineering, physics and earth science
- about personal finance, taxes, and how to use algebra to analyze income, spending, saving, and investing in real estate, businesses, and the stock market
- how to speak common words, phrases, and ideas in a second language that is commonplace in a students' community (there's a reason that "donde esta la biblioteca?" is a common joke made by non-Spanish speakers about what they learned in Spanish class. How often do you ask where the library is in English?)
- Word processing, computer literacy, rudimentary coding and graphic design, and any other technological skills that millenials make fun of baby boomers for not being able to do.
- Basic carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and other technical skills that baby boomers make fun of millenials for not knowing how to do.
- Networking skills like talking to parents, family friends, community members, and elected officials about problems, solutions, and opportunities.
That's the end of my rant for today. I hope teachers can take some of this and implement it successfully, for I fear that students who can't learn urgently now are dooming themselves to not having the skills to learn urgently later. And it's out duty to set them up for success.