Operation: Motivation
Matt Champion in the principal at Central Park Public School in Markham, Ont. He’s found that students’ attitudes towards learning depend on their age.
“When you’re working at the primary level, there’s an intrinsic motivation at a young age,” Champion said. “They’re just starved to learn at that point.”
Eight-year-old Michael Jackman is at that point. He wakes up before dawn to get to 6 a.m. hockey practice, strives to get the top scores in math class, likes to express himself through art and is curious about the other cultures discussed in religion class. Michael is a learning sponge. He said he is interested in learning because a new skill or concept brings about a sense of accomplishment.
“You feel good when you get good grades because you’ve worked hard,” Michael said.
Kathy Seal is a journalist who has always been interested in human behaviour. She has written two books on the subject of learning and motivation. Echoing Michael’s reflection, she said accomplishment is itself a motivator.
“That good feeling from becoming competent spurs us on to learn more things so we can get that good feeling again,” Seal said.
As well, she said it’s a survival instinct to seek out new skills and information.
“Psychologists believe that babies are born curious with a desire to learn,” Seal said. “The way evolution has hard-wired them… (this) ability to learn skills enables them to survive.”
Even at eight, Michael suspects that having some sort of skill set makes him a more popular member of society. He said that one advantage of working hard in school is being well-liked.
“Teachers like you more and you’re more popular because people know you’re good at something,” he said. “People want to be friends with someone who is good at something.”
Champion says that learning for the sake of learning tends to wear off as students reach adolescence.
“(Motivation) starts to become more of a challenge when they get older. In Grades 7 though 9… you need to focus more on engagement,” he said. “By the time kids get to early adolescence their shift really becomes social learning. They’re wanting to connect more with peers.
When he taught Grade 7, he found that he really needed to tap into that social dynamic to focus students on learning.
“When you’re working with older students, you’re going to try and get them working groups and engaged in conversation together,” Champion said. “The trick is… to set up structures to stay on task.”
Champion said another way to engage students is to play to their interests.
“One of the things teachers will try is to survey the students to find topics they want to learn,” he said.
Referring to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, Champion said it is important for teachers to plan activities around different kinds of intelligence. While some students in the class might respond really well to math and logic problems, others will be frustrated. But they might respond really well to activities centered around linguistics or visualizing.
Champion and Seal agree that in addition to a teacher’s attempt to engage students in learning, a child’s home life plays a role in his motivation too. Seal said that young people whose parents are attuned to their needs and feelings tend to be more curious and take more initiative in school and activities.
“When your child has the secure base of your caring and affection, when she knows she will get what she needs from you both materially and emotionally, she’s more likely to venture out into the world confidently to explore it,” Seal said.
Champion said people need to see a benefit to what they’re learning.
“Some kids, if learning doesn’t seem relevent, either to their world today or the world they’re going into, they just tune right out,” he said.
One Grade 8 student at Champion’s school doesn’t see any importance in working hard in school. The student has a brother who dropped out in Grade 10 and now has a job making $15 per hour.
“To the kid in Grade 8, it doesn’t matter. In his eyes, the brother is making a million dollars,” Champion said. “So he’s thinking, ‘Why do I care if I do well in school?’ He can’t see far enough down the road to realise a $15-an-hour job isn’t going to support him for the rest of his life.”
On the flipside of that, Michael Jackman has been raised with the belief that a good education is important so he has always been encouraged to do his best. Michael says he does well in math class because his dad likes math. He likes reading because he can exercise his curiosity all on his own.
“(Independent reading) is a whole new stage,” Michael said. “When you can’t read, you can’t tell what things are. When you can, you can read about all new things you can learn in books and you can read jokes and take up some spare time and it’s fun.”
Learning on the playground
The climbing tree at the south end of Kew Gardens in east-end Toronto has been a mighty opponent for Mackenzie Scott for some time now. While her friend Maia swings from branch to branch above, Mackenzie prepares for one more try. Clad in a light pink jacket and rainbow toque, she gives each hand a lick to sooth the redness from cold and tree bark and grabs hold of the first branch.
Her mother, Debra Scott, stands nearby – coaching the four-year-old as she pulls her body upwards. Once able to drape her arm across the first branch, she swings one leg over to give herself support. Finally she pulls the rest of herself up until she’s sitting upright.
“You did it!” her mother cries. “All by yourself, you did it without me!”
Laughing, losing and learning: All part of the game of growing up
A christmas delight: Kevin Herod's next show at the Comedy Bar will help get you in the holy-jolly mood.
In Grade 3, Kevin Herod proudly marched to school clutching The Two Detectives, his first movie script. He thought for sure it was grade “A” material. When his teacher handed it back to him, full of corrections, Herod felt like he had failed.
“I was one of those kids that wished the teacher said, ‘Hey this is a good story.’ She only corrected the spelling mistakes, but in my mind it was like the story was bad. But, it actually influenced me to do better the next time,” he said.
From sports to report cards, a child learns that losing and failing are part of life. Stuart Shanker, a research professor of philosophy and psychology at York University, considers losing the most important stepping-stone in a child’s development. From learning to walk, an infant will fall before it can stand strong. A parent cannot always be there to pick up the pieces or protect a child from losing, failing or struggling.
“Whatever the activity is, you have to learn how to do it… you’ve got to take risks. You’ve got to face the fact that you might fail because that is the nature of life,” Shanker explained. “And you may fail over and over. Success and satisfaction comes from picking yourself up and trying again and mastering it.”
While Herod’s strength in dealing with failure may have started with The Two Detectives, the now-seasoned comedian and scriptwriter chose his career despite the risks of getting booed off stage; he loves the hecklers.
“One time I was booed and it actually settled me down,” he said. “I was really nervous and not prepared and having the chance to make a joke at the heckler made me relax and do my show.”
The art of laying out a magazine
Laying out a magazine is a tedious process. I’m sitting next to my three partners as we attempt to pull an all-nighter (we’ll see how far into it we get). They’re much more adept in the ways of inDesign and Photoshop than I am, so as they organize the page layouts and artwork I’m on blog duty.
The one thing I can do, however, is observe. And through my observations I have seen Meghan battle font sizes, hyphenation and line spacing as she expertly places all of our articles into an inDesign layout. And Michelle is at the end of the row, cursing Photoshop because it won’t let her place an arrow where she wants it on the picture. Luke is to my right. He had been editing a story. Then he helped solve Michelle’s arrow issue, and now he’s preparing our cover photo.
Now Meghan’s got the inDesign handbook out and is flipping pages to find the one dedicated to wrap sidebars. Not quite what one imagines when plans are made to lay out a magazine. Where’s the fun? The creativity? The enjoyment? Well, it’s there if you look hard enough.
We got to bring in a real goat brain earlier for our cover shoot. That was fun, placing it on the anchor desk in the news room for pictures with Katie, who happens to be Meghan’s sister and our cover model. Before that, Michelle and I had to try and fasten both halves of the brain together by hand with a paper clip and a staple.
The people in the computer lab are a lot of fun to be around, and help keep each other laughing through this long day.
Pizza and lasagna and juice was a very welcome dinner.
Meghan just mentioned that this experience has brought us closer together.
Michelle is drinking Meghan’s bubble water. Luke’s outside for a quick smoke. Meghan’s still fighting the good fight against line spacing and font sizes. And I’m blogging.
This is a good team.
The sign of the times
When Stephanie Curtin fed her seven-month-old daughter, Sepheria, she would touch her hand to her mouth and say the word “eat”. When Sepheria started to cry, Curtin would touch her hands to her chest and turn them, showing her hands were empty, and would ask her daughter, “All done?”
“I had read that babies could learn sign language well before they could speak,” Curtin said. “I had been around a lot of other babies that seemed pretty frustrated and could not get their desires across, so I thought I would try it.”
Teaching babies American Sign Language (ASL) offers parents and hearing infants the ability to communicate with each other well before a baby can learn to speak.
Teaching the child sign language releases the frustration in the household Curtin explains. ASL makes it possible for both baby and parent to understand early “wants” and “needs” and to engage in learning at a very young age. Read more…
Promoting self-esteem leaves kids behind
At the age of four and a half, Denise Basse arrived Montreal from Jamaica. When a teacher mentioned that Heron struggled in her classes, her mother decided to try a different school.
Basse never failed a grade in school and to this day she still struggles with reading and writing. While she understands her mother only wanted the best for her, Basse, now 26, still feels it was wrong to let her pass.
“I struggle to this day with reading and writing. It is a constant thing, at work I have to read over emails, to make sure there aren’t any mistakes,” Basse said. Read more…
Immigrant Song: Learning English outside of the classroom
Natalia Tchalova has some advice for immigrants who are struggling to learn English in Canada: sit down, relax and turn on the television.
When Tchalova moved to Toronto from Russia 10 years ago, she struggled with the daunting language barrier. And while ESL classes were widely available Tchalova, like a large number of immigrants, learned to employ strategies in her everyday life to improve her English skills. For starters, she turned to the tube.
“All the time you’re at home, it should be on,” Tchalova said. “It’s especially good to listen to news channels because during the day it repeats over and over.”
Shahnam Ma, who came to Canada from Iran seven years ago, agrees. In his late 20s, he found that his own learning methods helped him learn English quicker than ESL classes did.
“Whenever I’d see a new word on the closed captioning I’d write it down or look it up right away,” Ma said. “So if you learned one word a day, you learned 365 words a year. The progress is slow but you still learn everyday.”
Back to the blackboard: Starting over at middle-age
When David Bagley stood in front of his class at Seneca College to lead an aerobics session, he felt like an old dog among pups. At 41, he was more than twice the age of some of his classmates. But by the end of the program, this old dog found that new tricks aren’t so difficult to learn.
For 20 years Bagley worked as a machine operator for the federal government. When his plant closed and he was offered a chance to go back to school to begin a second career, he leapt at the opportunity. Bagley chose to become a personal trainer.
“I wanted to try something new,” Bagley said. “I was interested in it and I was in pretty good shape so I thought it would be a good thing to do.”
Going back to school in middle age can be daunting. For people such as Bagley, it means returning to a routine they left behind decades ago and a strong sense of being out of place.
From cinnamon roll to honour roll: How a healthy breakfast propels students to the top of the class
Fresh Start
The first rule of Breakfast Club: everyone talks about Breakfast Club. Precisely why sixteen-year-old Malcolm Wyllie stands over a grill in the family studies kitchen at George Harvey Collegiate Institute. He’s palming a fresh loaf of whole wheat bread.
“Sometimes I go through eight of these in a day,” he said.
In all, three grills operate, churning out grilled-cheese sandwiches as fast as possible. Behind Malcolm, students peel and slice apples and prepare juice, stack plates and organize cutlery. Then, the first voices are heard down the corridor leading to the room.
Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009 stands as the busiest day in the nine-year history of the George Harvey breakfast club. In total, 140 students passed through the kitchen.
