TE 803: Case Study Spring 2013 Kristi Metz Part I: Proposal The student I chose to work with and

focus on for the case study is Evan (name has been changed). Evan is a sophomore, and this is my second semester as his English teacher. Evans main struggle in English class is motivation. He failed the first semester, which he will have to make up through summer school or in place of an elective class during his senior year. This semester has not proved to be much more successful. Evan lacks motivation in class and outside of class; he rarely participates in discussion during class, and he never turns in homework. He is a fairly social and speaks often with others in class. If he isnt speaking with others, he chooses to sleep or play with his phone, which I often ask him to put away. He seems to lack intrinsic motivation to get any work done or pass the class. I have a couple of ideas as to why he might be acting this way. First of all, he struggles with English more than any of this other subjects. Some students who face a challenge tend to ignore it rather than face it. His parents speak limited English, and I think it is a second language for him. He doesnt get practice with it at home, and his parents arent very able to help him on any assignments. Without any push from home in this subject, his motivation suffers. He doesnt have any source of positive encouragement to help motivate him for success. Another reason he might be struggling with motivation is the lack of the right kind of challenge. English is very overwhelming to Evan, and probably seems unsolvable. In Willinghams article Why Dont Students Like School?, the author writes about students who lack motivation and their need for solvable problems. Problem-solving through smaller tasks can encourage students in their abilities and help them to gain confidence and learn to like the subject. Courses that dont offer the right kinds of challenges to students can make students like Evan more overwhelmed, and cause them to lose motivation for the subject at all. This is an inventory of what I have already tried: 1. Have I made numerous and varied efforts to connect empathically with the student? Somewhat. I have met with him individually, followed up with him on specific assignments, spoken with his parents at conferences, and asked him to come after school to make up assignments. 2. Have I provided numerous and varied opportunities for the student to learn? What specific strategies have I tried? Somewhat. I have given extended deadlines and tried to develop a relationship with this student.

3. What have I said directly or indicated indirectly to the student that might help to change attitudes, behavior? I try to be positive with him, but also firm. I have talked to him about his grade and about missing assignments several times. I have tried to encourage him to turn things in. 4. Have I contacted others who might help me with the student (e.g. parents, guidance counselor, special ed teacher, other teachers)? Not really. I did speak with his parents at conferences, but I have not done a good job of contacting others for help. 5. In this case, have I accounted for teaching the student to take responsibility for his/her own actions and learning? How have I done that? In some ways. I have given him more chances than other students to turn in late/missing work, but I do hold him responsible for his work. 6. Do I detect in myself any bias toward this student that might interfere with my best efforts? How might I counteract this? No. If anything, I would have a positive bias toward him, but I think our relationship is neutral. I want him to succeed the same way I want others to succeed. 7. How have my efforts devoted to this student affected the time and attention devoted to other students? To my personal time? I have spent some extra time with him, but it has not been enough to impact my personal time or time with other students. Part II. Action Plan I need to work on issues of motivation with Evan. In light of my proposal and the questions answered there, I have a couple of ideas of strategies I could try. First of all, I want to keep a weekly assignment log with Evan. I think that by signing assignment log and checking in with him, he would feel motivated to get more work done. He doesnt work with many teachers one-on-one as far as I can tell, so I think that maybe the individual attention and encouragement will motivate him. The weekly assignment log will be a place to write down all the homework due for that week. I will break it into several columns: one for writing down the homework, one for my signature, one for a parent signature, and one with a checkbox for whether or not he turned in his homework that day. For every time he gets a parent signature, I will add one point to his research project that we are currently working on. Second, I want to find more opportunities to encourage him in the work that he is doing. This student rarely gets praise for his work, because he rarely does it. When he does participate, however, the work is often very good. I want to make sure he is praised for

his effort, not just for the right answer. I will do this through the assignment log, positive phone calls home, and also offering extra participation points if he gets all his assignments turned in for a week. I will also do this verbally. Saying things like, Good job and I see you are working hard and Im really proud of you for turning that in/participating will hopefully help him to be proud of his work. Lastly, I want to work on tailoring my instruction to make sure that students are being given problems to solve (from Willinghams article) every day in class. Students will be more motivated if they are given challenges that are able to be solved. For our poetry research project, students are being given a poem to analyze. We will model one together in class, then have students do one on their own. This is one small problem that can be solved after modeling in class. I will work with him to complete this small task, so that he is able to use it to write his research paper. The main text I am pulling from is Willinghams Why Dont Students Like School?, which has a great focus on motivating students who just dont seem to enjoy school at all. I think this is a big struggle for my case study student. He doesnt like being in my class, and he isnt motivated to do the work while hes there. I am learning a lot from this article about motivating students by giving them problems to solve- making them think critically very often.

Part III. Reflection Evan has made some significant progress in the past few weeks, though it seems very hot and cold. Some days his motivation improves greatly, other days he falls back into apathy. An outside motivator has been the upcoming progress reports and parent teacher conferences, which will occur this week. Evan realized his grade was in the failing range, and that has helped to jumpstart some productivity. I gave Evan a weekly homework log to fill out and have signed each night by a parent. Each time the form gets signed, he gets an extra credit point toward the project weve been working on in class. He only got the form signed one time, but having the daily check-in with me during class seemed to help him get focused on deadlines and daily homework. For one of the first times, Evan tried some work on his own. He is easily overwhelmed by work he doesnt understand, so he doesnt do it. With the major project weve been working on, a poetry analysis paper, he was struggling a lot. He stayed after school for tutoring and I stayed to help him. At first, he wouldnt even try the work. But, remembering the article I read on motivation and students needing to be challenged, I tried to clarify the questions on the poetry analysis and ask him to try them for himself. I tried to focus on the question, What do you think?, to make sure I wasnt just giving all the answers. On several points, I told him that I would not be able to help him until he wrote something down as a starting point. That motivated him a lot. He stayed for the full length of tutoring, and came to my office the next day for another 30 minutes of work time. He brought work that he had done at home, which was a great thing!

Now that this major project is accomplished, I dont know what will come next. E seems to be getting on the right track, but I worry about the day-to-day work that we complete in class, and whether or not he will participate for the upcoming novel were reading. I plan to continue using the weekly homework log with him and asking him to get it signed. Im also concerned about the time commitment. As of right now, I check in with him every day in class for about two minutes, which isnt anything crazy. But the after school tutoring and working with him on my lunch hour was another hour and a half of work. I am not sure how to condense this, because 1 - 2 hours every week with one student seems like it goes past my teacher limits. Here is an Inventory of what I have tried: 1. Have I made numerous and varied efforts to connect empathically with the student? Yes. I talk to E every day about how he is doing, and try to connect with him on a personal level so that he knows that I care about him. 2. Have I provided numerous and varied opportunities for the student to learn? What specific strategies have I tried? Yes. I have worked with him during class, after school, and at lunch. I have tried to give him space in class to get work done, but I have also pushed him to work hard during tutoring when he is not distracted by others. 3. What have I said directly or indicated indirectly to the student that might help to change attitudes, behavior? I keep focusing on the question, What do you think? to try and put the ball back in his court. I think too often with students like E, when they fall so far behind the teachers just give the answers or give a failing grade. Neither one is helping. By asking him to think, on the spot, out loud, with me, Im challenging him in a different way, and in a context where hes not in front of the whole class. I have also tried to be very positive in my encouragement with him. I have said things like, Yeah, thats great!, Awesome!, and Good Job! throughout the process. 4. Have I contacted others who might help me with the student (e.g. parents, guidance counselor, special ed teacher, other teachers)? I am hoping to speak with his parents at Parent Teacher conferences. I am going to speak with his counselor this week. 5. In this case, have I accounted for teaching the student to take responsibility for his/her own actions and learning? How have I done that? This is where I am still in process. I think he is leaning heavily on me at this point. If I wasnt meeting with him and pushing him, I dont know that he would be doing the work.

I want to do some further reading and researching to find a good method of transferring responsibility to him. 6. Do I detect in myself any bias toward this student that might interfere with my best efforts? How might I counteract this? If anything, I think the bias is positive. E is a really sweet student and I want to see him succeed so badly. I need to make sure that I am not being too lenient with him on the work were doing. 7. How have my efforts devoted to this student affected the time and attention devoted to other students? To my personal time? It hasnt cut into my time with other students, but it has cut into my personal time. 1 hours were devoted to him in one week, which is time I would normally spend grading and planning. Final Reflection: I think E is motivated by challenge, like the article stated. Since he didnt have to do the work in front of the whole class, he felt more comfortable. He responds well when he knows that people care about him, and I have tried to continue showing my care for him as an individual. I took the following points from Willinghams Why Students Dont Like School article and implemented them into my strategies: Praise effort, not ability (10)- in my time with E, I have praised the fact that he puts in effort and actually attempts the problem, which he did not used to do. Dont take study skills for granted (11)- giving E a weekly homework log is a part of developing the study skills of writing down homework assignments and knowing due dates. Identify key questions and ensure that problems are solvable (12)- giving E small sections of a project to work on, with concrete, solvable answers (e.g. looking for examples of figurative language in a poem) have been building his confidence, making him more ready to answer more substantial, critical thinking questions (e.g. What does this poem mean?)

I have learned a lot about my own approach with students who lack motivation. I want to help them so badly, but often times the help I give them isnt really helping. Giving them answers or excusing them from work is only making motivation issues worse. I didnt realize how much it would motivate a student if I just asked good questions. I have made some mistakes in the way of transferring responsibility. Right now, a lot of the weight is on me. If I check in with him, he will do it. If I dont check in with him, he wont do it. There needs to be a shift where he takes over the bulk of the work on his own, but this will probably take time.