More Learning, Less Stress

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Enjoy this free download of Dave Stuart, Jr’s Student Motivation Checklist.

Susan

Hi there, Dave. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

So to get started, how about if you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as both a teacher and as an author?

David 

Okay. I’ve been teaching for about 20 years, secondary English language arts and history. I’ve taught in Baltimore and I currently teach in Michigan where I live with my family. and about 12 years ago, I started to write a blog for teachers. At that time, I was focused on understanding the standards documents that applied to my setting. and since then, I’ve written a few books and, and done professional development for teachers around the world on just really kind of fundamentals of teaching. That’s really what I write about. It’s what I focus about in my classroom. So if you had to summarize my approach, it’s all about more learning with less stress, less stress for students, less stress for me, and more learning for all of us.

Susan

I love that. And in my research for the episode, actually found that you quit teaching at one point. Is that true?

David 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I taught for three years and I was trying to be the, you know, the heroes from the movies. Classic new teacher, trying to be all things for all people. Working crazy hours nonstop around the clock, no boundaries. And I just couldn’t imagine how I was going to be able to, you know, have a family and a life and also teach. I quit for a year and did a lot of soul searching. And when I came back, that was kind of when I knew I…

I needed to do this. I felt compelled to be a teacher, but I was going to have to find a simpler way to do it.

Susan 

And so what did you discover? So how is the second time around different so that you don’t burn out?

David 

Yeah, I mean, I really started to take seriously teachers in my building that were getting great results with students and were well regarded, but also seemed to have a good life. They seemed to be people who read a lot of the research and the literature and just slowly over time had honed their craft. I just quickly became a parent that being a great teacher is not about looking like the Hollywood archetypes. It’s really about kind of good, well-designed lessons, good, strong working relationships with students. And then the more that I wrote, so my writing really guided a lot of my simplifications over time, the more I just started to hone in on some basic, basic things that I knew if I could just get good at a few things that I’d be a good teacher. And so that’s really it.

Susan 

That’s amazing, and I think it’s something that many teachers forget is that sometimes the best PD, the best way to learn is just from other colleagues in your building. Yeah.

David 

Yeah, yeah, the best PD is typically down the hall. Yep.

Susan

Exactly, exactly. So now you’ve written two best-selling books, The Will to Learn and These Six Things. What inspired you to write each of them because they are different and what do you hope that educators take away from

David

Yeah, so I mentioned that I began writing about standards and I was focused on the common core and there were several dozen of these standards and it was a much reduced list from previous iterations of standards but it was still too many things. And so as I started to, I just started to look for patterns and try to identify what are the basic components of these standards and standards for other disciplines. And so that’s where these six things came from.

It came from, I could just get really good at using my class time to cultivate student motivation, get kids thinking argumentatively, get them building knowledge, and get them reading and writing and speaking, those six things. If I could just get good at that, doing that type of stuff intelligently in a way that was responsive to my students, mindful of the subjects that I’m tasked with teaching that I would do a good job and that’s what these six things is all about. But as I was writing these six things that came out in 2018 there was just so much that I was coming across in the research and in my classroom related to student motivation that by the time these six things was out into the world I knew my next book needed to be on just that topic. Just chapter two of these six things I knew there’s like a whole book’s worth of ideas there.

And so that’s what the will to learn is about. So the will to learn came out in 2023. And it’s really just an extended deep dive into what I call the five key beliefs beneath student motivation. So, so yeah, and people always ask me, how many books have you written? I always say, well, there’s really only two that I would recommend. Cause I’ve written a couple of others, but those two books really are just like page for page, very dense with meaning to me and meaning to the folks who have read them. So yeah, that’s kind of the overview.

Susan 

Yeah. Yeah. So I’m curious about in the will to learn because student motivation, especially after COVID has been such a hot topic for so many. Was there any surprises for you as you went through the research on what actually motivates students versus what we might be doing that doesn’t do a darn thing?

David

So yeah, what surprised me is that students can be well motivated in all different types of curricula. So I saw a lot of attention. There’s so much attention on new pedagogies or just like totally revamping the whole curricula. So student directed learning only is the best. Project based learning only is the best. And what I discovered is that actually what these approaches can sometimes do is they cultivate beliefs about learning in students. But if we can just understand how those beliefs work, then we don’t need to think, if I just rehashed my whole, revamped my whole curriculum, then student motivation would be better. We actually can improve student motivation in all different types of settings by just apprenticing ourselves to these basic beliefs that students have or don’t have. And just watching how… really simple things done consistently over time can cultivate these beliefs in even our hardest cases of students. And you’re right, it’s gotten more difficult since COVID. I agree with that. And I’ve seen that in my class. But you know, it’s not like things were all golden pre-COVID either. So I think COVID just kind of took the lid off of a problem that was always there.

So this book is really meant to, mean, it came out post-COVID, but it really wasn’t a reaction to COVID so much as just a reaction to a timeless obstacle that students and teachers face.

Susan 

What I love about your approach and what you’re sharing is that it’s so simple. It’s streamlined, it’s simple. But what I often find with simplicity, very often in poetry or in writing or in everyday life, is that what seems simple is often difficult to actually implement. And one of the things that I can already hear teachers saying is, yes, this sounds great, but… I have this from my administrator and I have all of these other things and how do I simplify when I have all of these other demands on my plate? So what would you say to those teachers?

David 

Yeah, so I mean, in terms of the demands on our plate, I think that this is a problem that we all feel. And I understand that sometimes in some settings, like these demands are especially heightened. I just always return to what is actually possible. I can’t do all the things I’m expected to do with excellence. So an idea that I write about in these six things is actually from a Nobel Prize winning economist in the 50s is called Satisficing. And it’s this idea of deciding that for many of your tasks, you’re just going to do them at the the satisfactory level. You’re not going to do them with excellence. I think that Satisficing, it should almost be like a semester long course in teacher prep programs, how to satisfy, how to identify things that ought to be satisfied.

And so a lot of times, things like much of the grading that we do can be satisfied. And thinking about giving students good feedback, feedback that helps them grow, that cultivates motivation, that’s the type of thing to be excellent at. But even there, you can satisfy that with how frequently you’re giving the kind of feedback that helps students to learn, and the degree to which that’s individualized to every last student versus whole class feedback on patterns.

So, satisfying, like if there’s one thing that an overwhelmed teacher takes away from this podcast, Satisfying. Look it up, read some articles, and really give yourself permission to satisfy because it’s impossible to do all the things that we are supposed to do at the level of excellence. It’s not possible. And it’s not necessary to do all the things we’re expected to do at the level of excellence to be a good teacher.

Susan 

Yeah, I agree. And I think, I know it’s something that I struggle with. can laughingly call myself a type A that it’s everything’s got to be perfect. But you know, it’s not, that’s not reality for so many. How do you decide what is, what can be satisfied versus what we need to actually spend the time on and in mastering and becoming excellent.

David

So, mean, this is really the genesis of these six things. So my argument in that book is, if there’s a few areas you wanna get really good at and just put a lot of time and labor into thinking about them and experimenting and getting better, it would be those six things. And then, know, a lot of the minutia stuff. Like, I just don’t think that you need to be excellent at email to be a good teacher. I don’t think that you can be.

Excellent at email and be a good teacher at least I can’t Because for me to be excellent at email, however, we’re gonna define that it would just require me to constantly be putting my attention and This relatively low leverage source of work, know most of the emails that I receive read that I send They don’t do a ton To improve me as a teacher to improve outcomes for my students so like

That’s an area that I would satisfy. I come back to degrading, and I think that, you know, I know that there are schools where there’s crazy expectations on teachers for the number of things that they ought to grade, and I would encourage people to push back, push back on some of these expectations. I’m not saying to be irresponsible with grading but you know Kelly Gallagher a big English language arts thinker and writer is prone to saying if my students are if I’m grading everything that my students write then they’re not writing enough because it’s just not possible for me to grade all the amount of work that really my students are going to need to do in writing if they’re going to get good because they just need a lot to be doing a lot of writing. So my students write every day in my history classes and I’m grading very, little of that writing because it’s not required. I don’t need to grade all these things that they’re writing in order for them to improve as writers and student improvement should always be what we as professionals focus on. How do I help my students to improve? And when people say, well, you need 10 grades in the grade book per week, I’m going to respectfully push back on that because my core job is to help my students to improve.

Susan

Right, yeah, 100%, 100%. So what makes this really powerful is that you’re still in the classroom, Dave. So why, of all, is that important to you? And secondly, how do you balance being in the classroom with being an author and a speaker and an online professional developer?

David

Why is that important and how do I balance that? These are existential questions I still ask myself on a regular basis. Well, it’s important because I think as a creator of ideas and recommendations for teachers, I just, need to be putting the boots on the ground in my own practice every day. I need to be testing this stuff all the time. I need my demotivated students. I need them. I need them because it’s when I meet them and we together are trying to get to a place where they can actually be motivated in school. That’s where I can have assurance that this stuff actually works.

And that’s where I can also uncover the things that make this stuff hard because you made an excellent point. Things that appear simple, which almost everything I write about appears very simple and it’s intentionally simple, but it just is very difficult. It takes, I mean, I think I’ll still be getting better at this stuff in my classroom and you know, 10 years from now, I’ll still be learning things.

So that’s why it’s important to me and how do I balance, know, satisfying comes to the rescue again. People ask me, how do you do it all? And I always say, I definitely don’t, you know.

Like I’m not a person who’s taking on extra roles in my school, for example. Maybe I could, maybe I should, but I just realistically can’t. So I’m not a leader of the PLC or the department. I’m not a coach for a sports team. So these are just choices that I’ve made, knows that I’ve said, to allow for the yes of being in the classroom and also being a writer and a PD provider from time to time.

Susan 

Yeah, yeah, oftentimes our nos are the best thing we can do in order to provide ourselves with a bigger yes later. You often talk about the importance of teacher well-being as well in order to impact student success. So can you talk more about how supporting teachers can lead to better outcomes for students?

David

I mean, I always say that when teachers are flourishing, students will tend to flourish too. When teachers are growing and feel like they’re optimally pressured, then students will tend to have a similar experience. So there’s a little old tool that I use to unpack this with teachers called the Yerkes-Datson curve, which basically shows like a little bell-shaped curve and as pressure increases, you know, there’s no pressure and you’re actually not going to do very well. You need a little bit of pressure to do well. A lot of our students are under pressured and that’s why they underperform. So you move pressure along and your performance starts to increase.

But if the pressure keeps going up too much, then you end up back down at the bottom. So your performance is low and you’re also miserable. So, I mean, this is why teacher well-being is so important. If your teachers are just miserable and overwhelmed, this is a serious problem to pay attention to. And typically for leaders, like what you need to do there is really look at what you’re expecting teachers to do.

Try to understand where is all their time going? Where’s this pressure coming from? And seek to alleviate those things. It’s not something that you can fix with a teacher wellness day, okay? Or a teacher wellness PD. That’s not gonna work. You need to equip your teachers to really appraise their level of pressure and give them permission to take some things, to say some more no’s so that their yeses can be of higher quality.

Susan 

Yeah, I love that. I think you’re right that oftentimes we discount the need for pressure, that there is a really good sweet spot for so many of us. And I know for me, once I stepped out of the classroom, I moved this to my employees. I often check in with them in terms of, you challenged enough? Are you overwhelmed? And where is that balance? And so I think that’s really important. One of the other frameworks that you use is the PERMA framework, you talk about this, how can, first of all, what is it? And then how can school leaders and teachers foster these elements in their work?

David 

Yeah, so Marty Seligman was kind of a leader in the positive psychology movement, which is just this idea of studying human flourishing versus studying like psychological problems. And so what he basically did is developed this short list of things that typify flourishing human being perma. So positive emotion, engagement, relatedness, meaning and achievement.

So the whole idea of PERMA is that if I want to appraise my current level of flourishing, can do things like look at, how frequently in a school day am I experiencing positive emotion? Is there anything that I can do to increase that? Engagement, am I engaged with what I’m teaching or am I becoming disengaged? Relatedness, am I connecting with other people or not meaning do I do I feel like there’s a sense of meaning in my job if not could I do anything to improve that and then achievement is there any mountain that I’m trying to climb is there any goal that I’m trying to meet this year so you know it’s a it’s a helpful description of what we all would like what our hearts long for and I think it’s really helpful then to use as a tool

And my bias is always, do I control? Right? Because I think that my bosses influence my perma, my job conditions influence my perma. But at the end of the day, the thing I’m most in control of is me. So if I’m every down minute on my screen and I’m used to being engaged by my phone, then well, maybe that’s something that I could improve to find greater engagement or relatedness in my life.

Susan 

Yeah, what a wonderful concept of being able to explore each of these areas. I’m curious, does your school ever implement the research that you have found and are sharing with others?

David 

So I definitely don’t push that. You know, don’t want to be that guy in the building. But they do, so there’s a strategy in the Will to Learn called Tracking Moments of Genuine Connection, which is just kind of a basic approach to building relationships where students feel seen making sure that you’re keeping track of those so that you’re You’re you’re attempting to build these relationships with all students So that’s the one thing of my 12 years of writing that I’ve really seen my school latch on to and seek to implement now for we’re in the This the first half of the second year of that You know and and I’m gratified to see that people are taking it making it their own

Right? Because these things really, it’s not like proprietary information. It’s my books are really like just describing what is good teaching, what are effective practices, why do they work? So it’s fun to see people take, like people in my building take and make it their own.

Susan 

Absolutely. I just, I always like to ask because sometimes, and I speak with a lot of people who are like you, who still in the classroom, still in schools, but offering so many things to other educators in the world. And I always wonder and curious whether their own schools realize what a gem they have and if they implement any of those ideas. I’m also curious because of your simple but such effective approach to teaching on your opinion of the rise of what we should call edutainment. I see this a lot, especially over social media, that teachers, I feel like they almost feel pressured to do all of these things and have the fancy classrooms and, you know, take hours of creating these moments, these, in the guise of this is what our students deserve.

So I’m curious as to your response to those, that rise of that edutainment idea.

David

Well, with all due respect for the heart that is doing those types of things, I think it’s really ill-advised because what we’re really offering to our students, what they really deserve, is a chance to grow towards mastery of whatever we’re teaching them, to become a stronger, fuller, more expansive human being by getting better at math or art or whatever.

And when we take extreme efforts to make these super special, again, kind of that Hollywood-esque approach, I think we can send an unhelpful message that it’s only worth paying attention, it’s only worth caring about if it’s like the next level of amazing. know, a classroom’s only good when it looks totally beautiful in like a cafe or whatever.

So yeah, I’ll do respect to those efforts, but I do think you can send, can unintentionally reinforce the problems that you’re seeking to address with approaches like that versus an approach that’s just really thinking about how do I help all these young people to grow? How I help them to all get actually better and to see that they did that, they became better, you became better through efforts that you undertook. And that’s the real power of an education and it’s also something that is so much deeper and more powerful than like an edutainment type moment. So yeah, those would be my unvarnished thoughts.

Susan 

Yeah, and it’s something that is a hotly debated topic. I like to hear what other people think of it. I like you. I’m a fan of doing less things better and really refocusing our efforts on what our students actually need. So I’m so excited to hear you share your ideas on that as well. We’ve been talking a lot about student motivation and how that’s connected to so many other things, including credibility and classroom management. From your experience, what’s one strategy that teachers could start using today that could enhance or deepen student motivation?

David 

Okay, well I mentioned the tracking moments of genetic connection earlier, but I’ll go to a different one that I was just speaking to a colleague about. So I write about woodenization in the book as a way to enhance the effort belief, really to enhance growth mindset. So woodenization is named after John Wooden, who famously taught his college athletes to put on their socks and shoes in the best possible way on the first day of basketball practice and and wouldn’t repeatedly cited this as like a key insight into why he had the huge success that he had. So the idea is that if there’s any learning conducive behavior you would like your students to do, you just want to very clearly explicitly teach them how to do that model for them how to do that give them reinforcement on that. So easy areas where teachers could see big boost in student motivation would be if you have students taking the test teach them how to study for the test. Show them exactly how to study for the test. This would be a huge service to them and their motivation in your class, but very likely is the type of thing that they’ll remember for years to come. It could change the trajectory of their life. So it can be things like that. How do you take notes?

Well, what do you do when you’re confused? How do you resist distraction in this distracting world? So organization is just like really teach them how to do it. Have a little mini lesson where you teach them exactly like follow these steps. Try to think about these three bullet points. And you can go crazy with this one and you can do it for all types of things. And what you’re doing there is signaling to your students that not all effort is equal. You’re saying I’m not a teacher that just wants you to work hard.

I want you to work effectively. I want you to get a big bang for your buck because I know that your time is precious. So let me show you exactly how to study to be successful for this assessment. Let me show you exactly how to set yourself up for this essay that we’re about to write or this project we’re about to complete in art class.

Susan 

That’s so good because so many, and I know I’ve been guilty of this as an educator, there have been many times when I make the assumption that my students already know how to do that. I don’t need to teach that, but that is, and I know I’ve seen it with my daughter that I assume she knows how to study for the SAT. And then I find her floundering and going, I never even thought that maybe you didn’t have those skills. So being able to go in and explicitly teach them, so helpful.

David 

And that’s why the Wooden is named after him because, I mean, wouldn’t you assume that your college athlete, like they all know how to do this, right? So he’s saying, but you just, there’s anything that you want your learners to do, you, it’s like you’re in the best position to teach them and make sure that they’re doing it the best way they can. So yeah, yeah. Assuming is a big

David

cause of student demotivation in school. Massive cause.

Susan 

That’s important. think that’s really important for all of us to hear is it’s stating assuming

David

Massive assuming assuming is a massive massive cause of the demotivation that we see in students huge and you You rightly pointed at that and you know your daughter. I’m assuming like she’s great. She’s smart. She’s ambitious But just like I mean the the evidence from colleges is overwhelming that students study ineffectively in college

So that’s an unforced error. It doesn’t have to be that way. And we can start to create change in our own classes.

Susan 

Yeah, absolutely. Now, you do speak all over the world, all over the US. So what are some trends that you’ve been noticing over the last 12 to 18 months in education right now? Are there any that excite you?

David 

Good, good, good redirect. Yeah, so I was gonna say, you know, demoralization and exhaustion. So what excites me? I think what excites me is that there’s still mission driven people in education. Everywhere that I go, there’s people who got into this job to make a difference, just like I did, just like you did. And like,

So there’s still these people that are coming forth despite the difficulty, despite how it’s getting harder every year. There are these people with these great intentions. And that excites me because, you know, when I read about teaching shortages, that really worries me because we need people that are drawn to this incredibly powerful work. I do think on the whole, you know, I’m

I make it a point to regularly talk to teachers who’ve done this for three decades or more, recent retirees that really retired well, you know, ended on a high note. Because I just want to be reminded that these types of careers are possible and these are people that are really grateful for how they’ve spent their life. So that excites me. That excites me.

Susan

Is there anything that concerns you that’s a trend right now.

David

I mean, yeah, definitely the teacher demoralization and exhaustion and certainly AI is deeply unnerving to me. You know, I just think that of my whole career, that’s likely going to be the biggest disruptor based on everything that I’m seeing. you know, there’s a lot of opportunity, I think, but there’s just, it’s going to force a lot of adjustment, change, recalibration, new pedagogies will spawn forth from it, already are. When you’re a guy that’s kind of identified like these are the things I want to work on for the rest of my career, I’m paying attention. I’m paying attention to it and I’m thinking about it a lot.

Susan 

Totally understandable. And it’s something I think we all, as educators, everybody, think, can see both sides of the benefits and the dangers of it. And the fact that there’s not a container yet around the ethics component is something that, at least for me, I still get concerned about with AI. And so hopefully that’s something that can be addressed sooner rather than later.

So what is the best way that our audience can stay in touch with you and find out?

David 

Well, the best way is to visit my website, Dave Stewart Jr. Stuartjr.com. You’ll see a newsletter link. I always tell people that’s kind of the best way. If you just want little doses of my thinking, that’s really, that’s kind of the whole backbone of my whole approach. But you can Google my books, The Will to Learn These Six Things, that will give you a big old dose of the way that I approach this work.

And I’d love for people to connect and reach out.

Susan 

And we’re going to put all of those links in our show notes so that everybody can easily find you in all of the incredible work that you do. Dave, thank you so much for your for joining me today and for sharing your wisdom with us as so that we can all learn from you.

David 

My pleasure, Susan. Thanks for having me.

Susan

Of course.

 

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