When Robert Ellis saw a student jumping up and down on a dumpster adjacent to the school playground, he called him over for a chat.
"I asked him very nicely what he wants to be when he grows up," says the first-grade teacher at King Elementary School in Richmond. "It threw him for a loop, because he thought he was in trouble. Then he told me he wanted to be a football player. I said, 'Football players use their legs a lot. If you fall and get hurt playing on the dumpster you might not be able to be a football player when you grow up.' He said 'Hmmmm,' walked away and went someplace else to play."
Getting students to set goals and think about their future can motivate them to do better in school, both with academics and with behavior, say teachers. So can letting students know how deeply a teacher cares about them.
"I try to show an awful lot of love," says Ellis, who attended school in a low-income, high-crime neighborhood of Los Angeles that's similar to Richmond. "Our school is named after Dr. Martin Luther King, so I try to bring Dr. King into my lessons and explain what he stood for. Every day is a lesson here at school, and our mission is to learn as much as we can."
To motivate his students, the United Teachers of Richmond member praises them frequently for good behavior and has them recite an affirmation every morning:
I am here and ready to work.
I am a bright and shining star.
I can achieve great things.
I am special. I am unique.
There is nothing I can't do
If I put my mind to it.
A big part of motivating students "is getting them to feel good about themselves," says Linda Johnson, a math teacher at Pacific High School in San Bernardino. "I walk around the classroom trying to make nice comments. It helps to start with something positive before trying to point out something wrong."
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Robert Ellis asks his first-graders to be less exhuberant as they wait in line at King Elementary School in Richmond.
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A member of the San Bernardino Teachers Association, she also finds it helpful, motivationally speaking, to concentrate on her students' strengths rather than weaknesses. "A lot of them have holes and gaps in their mathematical abilities. I try to get them to master these skills in the regular curriculum rather than doing lots of review."
For example, if students haven't mastered their times tables, she finds clever ways "to get them to practice without really knowing it or feeling they are doing review." One way is to give them lots of different multiplication problems.
She maintains that having a true passion for one's subject as a teacher helps motivate students to learn. "I have an absolute love for math and, when they see how much I love it, it becomes contagious."
Students need to understand the relevance of what they're learning, says Jan Coleman-Knight, who has taught seventh-grade world history for 34 years at Thornton Junior High School in Fremont.
"Every student comes into the room wanting to know why he or she needs to learn history." The Fremont Unified Teachers Association member doesn't just tell them how important history is. She lets them find out for themselves.
"I pre-empt the whole issue," says Coleman-Knight. Their first assignment is to interview a family member who can tell them a family story.
She recalls how one boy told the class about his parents attending a political meeting in their native Cambodia. When a friend developed a stomachache, they decided to leave with him to make sure he got home safely. As they were walking down the road, they heard rapid fire and later learned the government had shot and killed everyone at the meeting.
"As he told the story, the boy realized how slim the thread of history is. Obviously, if his parents had been killed he would not have been telling the story." Understanding the need to keep their personal history from being forgotten helped students realize the importance of history in a larger sense, as well.
Like most of her special education students, Jenny Rodriguez was a second language learner. "I remember how teachers believed in me, and I tell my kids that I believe in them. If I could be a success, they can, too."
A member of the Visalia Unified Teachers Association (VUTA), Rodriguez is a resource specialist at Crowley Elementary School in Visalia.
She believes in connecting with her students, both at school and at home. She hosts Friday night pizza parties for students at her home, and pays their families home visits in return.
Tom Hernandez, a sixth-grade teacher at Ivanhoe Elementary School in Visalia, appeals to his students' sense of cultural pride. "There is a large Hispanic population of students, and when we study California history, we look at names of the cities. Many of them have a Hispanic origin, and we discuss how California used to belong to Mexico. It piques their interest and makes things more interesting to them."
Hernandez is not afraid to let his students see his "human" side. When he has a spare moment, he talks about things that interest him, like sports. He encourages students to talk about the things they like. And he files the information away in the back of his mind.
"Sometimes, during a lesson, I throw in things that I know excite them." For example, during a math lesson, he might ask a student questions about how many yards a football player might cover, and how that would translate into feet, inches or metric units.
"It helps to let them know I have a personal interest in them and that I care about what they are interested in," says Hernandez, a Visalia Unified Teachers Association member. "It's tough sometimes with so much curriculum to cover, but when you let children know you care for them as people and want them to succeed, it motivates them."
"I pull a lot of tricks out of my bag to motivate them," including simple rewards such as treats, stickers or bonus time on the playground. "But my real goal is to have their motivation be intrinsic, or come from within, so they want to do well for themselves - not because they will get a reward from me."
