What happens when you set students free to learn?

Three times per year, our students present what they've been learning to a panel of parents, peers, and teachers, and I get to sit in on every one. They are called Exhibitions, and they are a huge time requirement for me, but it I love them. They allow me to keep my finger on the pulse of the school and have a focused input into the lives of my students.

Lately, I've spent a lot of time in this blog talking about our struggling students, so I thought I'd highlight a few who are taking full advantage of the independence we offer. The Big Picture model of education is centered on internships and plenty of time for students to pursue independent learning, and at exhibitions, it's that independent learning that really shines.

First, one of our seniors. Here he is, playing a song he wrote. He is studying music theory. In his exhibition, he described the bridge he built for a local park and the mushroom growing project he has been leading with other students. (The mushrooms are in the lower part of the picture.) He recently met with some younger students to talk about using Dungeons and Dragons as the basis for their independent learning projects. It's a unique idea--an example of this young man's desire to help struggling classmates, and it could be a powerful venue for helping them master social skills and other competencies. 

And then there's this sophomore. He's only been with us one month and already he's a leader-by-example. He's researching artificial intelligence (how cool is that?!) and creative writing techniques. He's an active part of our kitchen crew, which cooks breakfast for the whole school on Friday mornings, and I am super psyched to see what the next two years hold for him!

This senior is a gymnast who has a love for children that just beams out of her. Last year, she did an experiment at her internship in which she tested the effect of active play on the ability of her students to pay attention to lessons afterwards. (I love to see students doing real science!) This fall, she took a course in athletic training at a local community college. In this picture, she is asking us to analyze a photo from Humans of New York. In her advisory, they've been learning about stereotypes and the difference between objective observations and subjective interpretations. She's excited about her advisory's "Humans of UCONN" project coming later this spring. Kudos to her advisor, Shannon, for such a cool idea!

And here's another junior who loves kids. She's been doing great things at her internship at a day care center, running her own little classes and helping to schedule activities. But she has her heart set on a career health care, and she is also pursuing her interest in photography. She also designed the first "Depotwear" this year, and I love the tree logo on the sweatshirt.

And speaking of photography, this sophomore is well on his way. This self-described "audiophile" is into sight as much he is into sound. He interns at a unique photographic studio, where he does everything from framing to developing and enlarging, and on his own time he produces unique portraits of classmates and others.

And this senior is another design-oriented student. She is auditing a set design class at UCONN this spring, and she showed us this cool project she's working on--you can see the black scale model on the table, there.  It's a set for a play that can be viewed from all angles, so the audience could sit anywhere around the stage. She interns at a local school, where she is designing a series of map-based lessons to teach her students to appreciate their diversity. She has a personal interest in minimalist living--especially tiny houses--and her senior paper was about how to go about minimizing waste in your life.

It's great to see students developing their love for learning and discovering their interests, but the main reason I love watching these exhibitions is that it gives me a chance to speak into their lives about their strengths and potential. I can tell them what I see in them--their creativity, their powerful minds, their compassion and passions, maturity, professionalism, and leadership potential.

I try to do this for every student, even those who are struggling or whose exhibitions don't display the same level of independence and drive. I do it in the hope that, with the right supports, they will get there and come into their own as the powerful learners and creators they can be.

And even with the students who already demonstrate a strong desire to learn, our work is not done. There's plenty of room for them to grow in productivity and depth and breadth of knowledge. What they've demonstrated is just the beginning.

Motivation required... or provided?

"As you can see, I have a lot of goals."

"As you can see, I have a lot of goals."

That's how she introduced the final slide in her exhibition presentation.

She's an intern at a law office, where she does clerical work and regularly communicates one-on-one with the attorney's there.

Now she laid out her goals for the rest of her junior year: take the SAT, finish two math courses on Khan Academy, her internship project, and plan our trip to New York City.

It's exciting to see our students sharing the real-world learning they're doing at their internships, their growing independence as learners, and their plans for the future. We're in the thick of second trimester exhibitions, and I get to see every one--music production projects, work at a veterinary clinic and hospital, and more.

But they're not all like that. For every student like these, we have one that struggles to hold an internship or to complete their academic work. Though we provide all of the autonomy, mastery, and purpose they could dream of, they still struggle with motivation.

This is why we've implemented new tiered supports to try to boost the "Expectancy" factor in Steel's motivation equation:

And yet we're finding it's sometimes not enough. There are some who still struggle with the motivation they need to succeed at the Depot.

The Big Picture model requires students to work at internships, complete independent projects, and learn most of their math and science on their own, all while giving them only 60% as much direct instructional time as traditional students. This requires lots of intrinsic motivation. If we do all we can and they're still stagnant, then we need to make some tough decisions.

A Director of Special Services once told me, "One of the hardest lessons for an administrator to learn is that we can't help everyone," and that's become clear to me lately. Many who struggle at traditional school thrive in our model, but there are others who are not making progress, though we've ramped up support as much as we can. Hopefully, someday we'll be able to serve those students, because I think the autonomy, opportunity for mastery, and purpose we provide has the potential to bring out the best in every student. For now, the best support I can offer is to help them find a place that can give them what they need, like a doctor referring her patient to a specialist.

There was a lot of encouraging stuff going on this week. Not only did I get to sit in on some really awesome exhibitions, there were also 14 students who signed up for our Fitness Challenge, setting fitness and health goals they'll try to meet over the next three months! But in the midst of that, there were some tough decisions, some tough conversations, and plenty of wrestling with this issue of our purpose and limitations as a school.

In morning announcements on Friday, I started with a slide that said, "Welcome to the Depot! Motivation required." That little statement has been bothering me since then--do we help students find motivation, or do we require it?

My conclusion is, both. We scaffold the process until they develop sufficient intrinsic motivation to take full advantage of our model. That's the ideal we're working towards, but until then, there will be some we can't help.

It's a tough way to end a post, but it's not the end of the story, either for them or us. They'll hopefully move on to something that works better for them, and we'll move on toward the goal of helping more students "have lots of goals."

How a new school changed my views on motivation

Depot students work on their balsa airplane experiment.

I've always been a big fan of alternative education, innovative ways to teach and new kinds of schools. I've always thought that the way we run school is the biggest problem we have in education: traditional school crushes students natural desire to learn. But I think I'm going through a paradigm shift, again, and my views on education and motivation are changing.

Since reading Daniel Pink's classic, Drive, I've been convinced that if we just give kids more autonomy, mastery and purpose (A.M.P.), they'll automatically flourish. I tested out some of these principles in my mastery-based biology class (with lots of encouraging results), and here at the Depot I've seen more evidence of the power of A.M.P.. We have students who were struggling in the traditional school, but are now thriving in our model. They have successful internships at vet clinics, law offices, schools, computer repair shops, photography studios, restaurants, and hospitals. They're writing novels, building bridges, planning field trips, growing mushrooms, studying languages and math online, building arcade stations, cooking delicious weekly breakfasts and soups for the school, and more.

But my engagement numbers in biology were not quite as high as I had hoped, and at the Depot, though there are many students thriving, there are just as many struggling. Nearly half our students struggle with attendance or academics. Nearly half have major social/emotional issues that leave them unable to take advantage of the autonomy our model provides.


It seems there's more to motivation than autonomy, mastery, and purpose. There's more to helping students succeed than increasing autonomy and real world learning.

I found this cool article by Piers Steel, in which he gives evidence for an alternative model of motivation (called TMT), which looks like this:

"Utility" is motivation. In this equation, "E" is expectancy, which includes whether you think you can do the task. "V" is how much you value the task. The funny looking "T" thing is the uppercase Greek letter, gamma, and it represents impulsivity and distractibility. Finally, "D" is the delay--how long you have to complete the task. Applying this formula, the way to motivate kids is to increase their confidence and competence, make it meaningful, decrease their impulsivity, and make the deadlines shorter.

I'm not sure how A.M.P. fits into this model (maybe it all gets lumped into "V"),  but in any case, I've had this gnawing feeling all year that my mental model--my paradigm--was missing something. Now I see that it's missing "E" and gamma. Many of my students either lack the skills they need, believe they lack them, or have other factors in their lives that make them unable to do the tasks. They have burdens, obstacles, and deficiencies that lower E or increase gamma.

This is why my paradigm is shifting: even in an innovative school where they have all the autonomy and real world connections they could dream of, many still struggle to find the motivation they need to succeed.

And this means we need to continue to ramp up supports. We've got the V thing taken care of with A.M.P., now let's work on E. We've set up a school that allows for highly valuable learning tasks, now let's get the kids to the place where they can take advantage of that.

The problem with modern schooling is not just a lack of autonomy and meaningful work, it's also a problem of a lack of supports for students who need it.

Brights spots of engagement

That's one of our students on the slackine. It was one of our Friday Fitness options this week. It's much harder than it looks, but it's an addictive blast. And he was fully engaged. How can we get students to be this engaged in learning?

For this week's "pick-me-up" activity on Friday morning, I gave the students the data we've been collecting on engagement. Ellen, our instructional assistant, has been walking around at random times each day recording how many students are on-task. As I told the kids Friday morning, "on-task" is not the same as engagement, and certainly not the same as flow, but it'll have to do for now.

So I handed out the data--just a list dates, times, and percentages, telling them that I wanted them to be a part of this whole "empowerment evaluation" process I'm trying to implement here. I told them I wanted them to have a say in improving their school.

I talked about doing science on ourselves. Research. Making hypotheses and testing them against the data--looking for patterns.

And then what happened?


Well, there was at least one comment along the lines of "Man, we suck!"

There was also some blank staring at the sheet.

But there was also plenty of discussion, and plenty of observations being thrown around.

I didn't give them this graph--just the data.

A few were surprised that Monday was so high. There was at least one hypothesis about why that was the case.

Many noticed that Tuesday and Thursday were very low. But this didn't surprise anyone, since these are the internship days, when fewer students are here, and those who are here are waiting to go to internship or returning from internship.

So I asked them the central question, "Would you like to see these numbers increase?" After a few heartfelt answers of "Yes!" I reminded them that if you want to see something change, you have to change something. You can't keep doing everything the same and expect results to change (seems like I've heard that somewhere before...).


As I walked around checking on their work, there were several students jotting things down on the data sheet, but one student in particular stood out. His sheet was covered in calculations. He was a picture of engagement. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was in flow.

I asked what he was finding, and he told me that he'd figured out that Wednesday's had the highest engagement, followed by Mondays and then Fridays. He'd done this by summing up all of the percentages for each day.

Why didn't he use the average? Because he was starting from where he was. I'm not sure he knew what an average was, or that it could apply here. Instead, he was working with what he knew to solve a new and meaningful problem.

Later, when he was back in his classroom, still working on the problem, I saw that he had a table constructed that included the numbers of data points for each day of the week. He had figured out that the different numbers of measurements on each day were important. When I asked him about it the problem, he replied, "Yeah, I know. I'm gonna even that out later."

Awesome. Awesome example of problem solving. Awesome example of motivation. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose in action.

He didn't have to do it (Autonomy).

He was in his flow channel (Mastery).

He was working on a real problem--to figure out what was happening with student engagement at his school (Purpose).

"One of the techniques for solving problems is called Bright Spots Analysis," I had told the students earlier that morning. "You look at the best days, and ask yourself why they are the best, and you try to replicate that."

This engaged student on Friday was a bright spot. Working with that data, doing some serious quantitative reasoning, he was as engaged as he was on that slackline. He was as engaged as I've ever seen him--as engaged as I've ever seen any student, for that matter.

Now if we can just replicate that.

Why study when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?

When we have to resort to external motivators, that means there's something wrong. Often, it means something we're doing is not fitting with human nature. That's why we have to force it.


And I have to wonder how much of our modern system of education and even civilization really is not a good fit for humanity at all.


Christopher Ryan tells the story of three natives of Tierra del Fuego, who were brought to England by Captain Fitzroy of the HMS Beagle to learn the ways civilization, in hopes they would serve as missionaries to their own people.

But when they were returned to their homeland, they just reverted to their old way of life--a primitive, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The good Captain offered to bring one of them back to England, but the man declined, saying he hadn't "the least wish to return to England," because he was "happy and contented" with "plenty fruits," "plenty fish," and "plenty birdies."

His response was similar to that of the Kalahari bushman who was asked why his tribe hadn't switched from their hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture. He replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"

This may apply to school in at least two ways.

First, who can blame young people who are enjoying their social lives, sports, hobbies, and freedom from responsibility, and whose parents are taking care of all their needs, if they choose not to work their butts off in school? Why bust their tails when there are so many mongongo nuts around and they haven't yet learned the "skill" of worrying about the future like we adults have?

Or maybe they feel a need to improve their lives, but their experience has told them that the educational system doesn't work for them. I imagine it doesn't take many suspensions or Fs on your report card to get that message loud and clear. No wonder these students "revert" to lifestyles they feel work better for them.




And I wonder how many young people, when presented with the modern education-career-retirement pipeline are simply not interested. And I wonder if that's a bad thing. After all, what's the point of all that education and career if it doesn't bring fulfilment, if it doesn't make us "happy and contented"?

Darwin and Captain Fitzroy didn't take the hint.  They were saddened by the inability of these "savages" to see the wisdom of the "civilized" way of life. But what if they were missing the point? What if they were the ones not seeing?

I wonder if we too easily assume that our modern systems are best without looking for how well they actually fit humans.

Why are we so stuck on extrinsic motivation?

Reading through Pink's Drive a second time, I came across the passage where he mentions a huge literature review that confirmed his hypothesis, and I wondered again:

Why are we still so wedded to extrinsic motivators when the research overwhelmingly points to intrinsic motivators?

And then I came across this critique of Pink, "Memo to Dan Pink and Friends: Incentives Do Not Undermine Employee Motivation," and I realized, it's not just that people haven't heard Pink's ideas: not everyone agrees with him.

This threw me into the following sequence of thoughts:

1) Wow. I'm all wrong about this intrinsic motivation thing. Ouch. I've been blogging for a year about and running my classes based on it.

2) But that's OK. At least I'm trying to improve--pushing the envelope. Failure is fuel.

3) Wait a minute. Why aren't there any links to the studies this guy mentions that refute Pink?

4) Hmm.. and why does he pull an ad hominem, mentioning that Kohn was a school teacher and Pink a political speech writer. Why does that matter?

5) Hmm... let's see what the Harvard Business Review has to say about it. After reviewing the results of several major studies and reviews, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic concludes, "The fact that there is little evidence to show that money motivates us, and a great deal of evidence to suggest that it actually demotivates us, supports the idea that that there may be hidden costs associated with rewards."

6) I understand it's a nuanced thing. Extrinsic rewards do motivate people to do better at mundane, routine tasks that they don't like doing, and some people do seem more motivated by money and other external rewards. But there seems no question that intrinsic rewards, like autonomy, mastery, and purpose are more powerful: "employees who are intrinsically motivated are three times more engaged than employees who are extrinsically motivated (such as by money)."

A month of motivation in my biology class

So I think I'll stick with the plan for now. Though my student's engagement levels are up and down, and not perfect (see chart), I'd rather focus on teaching them habits of intrinsic motivation than extrinsic.


The potential is there for really revolutionary change. And even though changing the educational system sometimes seems like trying to moving the pyramids of Giza, it's worth it. The data is there. They need to move.

Making a habit of autonomy, mastery and purpose

My differentiated biology class is based on the concept that humans are most powerfully motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose--a concept I got from Daniel Pink's powerful book, Drive.

But another powerful book has gotten me wondering lately whether I'm missing something: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

Duhigg breaks down habits like this: Habits consist of a cue (a trigger, like stress), a routine (like biting your nails or drinking), and a reward (dopamine).

But Duhigg emphasizes that it's really not a habit until you start craving it--until your brain starts expecting the reward every time it sees the cue.

I'd like to help my students form new habits, but at first the idea of habit seemed contradictory to Pink's trinity of intrinsic motivators.

Then I realized how the two ideas fit together:

1. Motivation is a craving. 
2. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose are routines that can produce rewards for your brain (dopamine). 

Some students crave good grades. Others don't.

Some develop the habit of doing their homework. Others don't.

We could focus on teaching them to crave grades and fear penalties, do their homework, and turn stuff in on time.

But I want to aim higher. I want to help my students develop habits of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

I want to help them crave the reward that comes from those things.

Because that's the essence of intrinsic motivation.