The X Factor

What is it that motivates students to be excited about a project or an assignment? 

I have been on the quest to discover the answer to this question.  This year has been a huge learning process for me as I tinkered with old lessons and activities to make them better.  Sometimes, I have even scrapped what has been tried and true in the past and replaced it with the product of one of my many “lightbulb” moments.  My Achilles heel of lesson plans every year has always been my persuasive unit – it’s a time bomb waiting to explode because as a teacher, you have to pick something the kids can write about that is a happy medium.  I have always been stuck trying to differentiate between using boring, over-used prompts like “Convince your principal to allow vending machines at school.” and prompts that act like magnets, pulling in parent complaints, such as “Is abortion wrong?”  As someone who is never satisfied with the results of the year before, I have gone both routes in the past, and they have led to either boredom or blow-ups.

 In pursuit of finding what it is that makes students excited to write and learn and research, I had a new “lightbulb” moment – authenticity.  Maybe the “X” factor in student engagement is being authentic to real life scenarios.  My thought is that this can be accomplished by creating assignments that mimic actual scenarios that could happen in the all-mysterious “life after graduation”.  Topics should be authentic too…something they can actually be passionate and excited about, not something scripted and pulled from an outdated resource book.  With these thoughts in mind, I came up with the “Do Something Now” project. 

The first thing about this project that I am excited about is that it asks students to find a non-profit organization that they are interested in and develop a five  minute presentation asking others to donate “money” or get involved.  I told them to treat their audience of peers as if they were members of a charity guild.  My students will actually vote on the most persuasive representative and will donate a fictitious pool of money to support the cause!  Instead of an actual check, the winning presenter will get points added to their score.  My favorite part about this assignment is what I call the “built-in bonus”.  If students spend time actually volunteering for that organization or if they mobilize and find a way to donate money, they will also receive bonus points. 

I’m only in year five of teaching, but I am really starting to see that passion is the key to doing anything.  It should be the reason why teachers get up every Monday through Friday and step foot for the umpteenth time through their classroom door.  The same is true for students.  They need a reason to care about why they do what they are asked to do.  They need a “non- scripted” answer to the question, “When are we going to use this?”  I don’t know how this project will turn out, whether it will be another flash- in-the-pan idea that will end up filed away like the rest of my persuasive project attempts.  The proof will have to be in the “X” factor….