Motivating Students And Teachers In An Era Of Standards

by Richard Sagor (A Book Review by Stephen Barkley)

Richard Sagor explores how standards-based reforms need not be negative for students or teachers. He believes that, implemented differently, a standards-based approach can bring teaching in line with other professions that attract more of the best applicants.

William Glasser's work in motivation and student needs (survival, belonging, power, freedom, fun) underlie Sagor's points of motivation, which are competence, belonging, usefulness, potency, and optimism.

Throughout the book, Sagor explores how each of these basic needs affect student and teacher motivation. He provides specific strategies for using the standards push to establish these motivators.

For example:

• Use a portfolio of personal bests. This helps students monitor their progress, nurturing their feelings of competence.
• Make instruction friendly to diverse learning styles, strengthening the sense of belonging.
• Instruct using cooperative learning, problem-based learning, and service learning, communicating a feeling of usefulness.
• Develop a personal responsibility curriculum in which students see that their choices affect outcomes, building a sense of potency.
• Provide students with compelling visions, support, and evidence of progress, promoting optimism.

As I worked through the chapters addressing each area of motivation for teachers and students, I was struck with how valuable peer coaching can be for teachers' motivation.

Sagor argues for such collaborative development: "The classroom teacher's need for belonging is often overlooked in schools. School administrators occasionally and incorrectly assume that because teachers are granted considerable autonomy within the walls of their classrooms, they don't have a professional need for collegiality and community.In environments where workers have come to be members of high-performing teams and regularly get to enjoy the camaraderie of their coworkers, higher levels of performance are invariably produced. It is critical that teaching be restructured into a more collaborative and collegial endeavor."

Optimism is critical for student success, and it is difficult to imagine student optimism in a school where teachers lack feelings of optimism. School administrators and teacher leaders can explore staff development, coaching, and faculty structures to create the five critical elements of teacher optimism:

• A compelling vision.
• Support.
• Opportunities for creativity.
• Opportunities for collaboration.
• A productive professional culture.

Sagor believes that creating universal school success rests on the optimism that we transmit to our colleagues, our students, and our communities.

Motivating Students and Teachers in an Era of Standards is available from the PLS Bookstore (BK987, $23.95). Call 800-506-9996, M-F, 8 to 4:30 Pacific time.