Motivation in school... the tween edition

[Whitestripe]

So my oldest (age 11) is starting Grade 6 (middle school!)  in a few weeks. Here's the problem, he's a really smart kid but only puts forth the barest minimum effort in the classroom.  Last year was... difficult, let's say.  We moved from a not so great school district (where the barest minimum effort resulted in straight A's, top of the class, teacher suggesting he skip a grade) to a very good district where, quite fankly, he had some catching up to do. His efforts resulted in B+  grades in the middle of the pack classes. (the students are loosely grouped according to ability, but not strictly tracked)  Instead of being motivated to catch up to his peers (kids he's known from birth outside the classroom) he decided that school was suddenly "too hard." 

 

Let me be clear, B+ grades are fine, but I know he can do better. For example, for almost the entire first semester, he had a perfect record with Monday morning spelling tests. (If you get a 100 on the Monday test you don't have to do the spelling homework or take the test on Friday) When he got the first few wrong, he said "Well, I guess I'm just gonna miss a few words this week. I don't know how  to spell those." Of course my response was "No, are going to practice and learn to spell the words."  He'd get to the word problems at the end of his math homework and say "I can't do word problems."  Of course he can, he just had to put forth a little more effort.  I told him that he had to join the math club at school, and he dropped out at the earliest  availble opportunity in favor of tutoring younger kids with remedial math at lunch/recess. (that's fine, he really liked tutoring and was awarded for it at the end of school ceremony, but he said the math club was "too hard to do the brain teaser questions")

 

He has to read three books as a summer assignment (with more quaiffying as extra credit) He's read exactly three, and has no interest in reading more (although he spends hours pouring over the D&D Monsters book and Spell Book)  If asked to read for 30 minutes, he sets the kitchen timer and will read for EXACTLY 30 minutes, no more.

 

I'm just frustrated with the wasted potential. If he struggled with school, I'd know what to do, but he does not.  He's doing fine, but doesn't want to excel. Part of me says it's just middle school, but the other part is worried that these habits will continue untl high school and he will always be a lazy student.  My FIL (who is brilliant and has done very well for himself as a result) says he was a medicore student until high school when a guidance counselor saw the potential and told him that good grades were his ticket out of a working class future at at the tire plant. (The primary occupation for everybody in the town where he grew up.)  FIL took the advice, began to work harder, became an electrical engineer and is quite happy and successful. 

 

What to do? How do I get it through this kid's head that school is important?

[Jo498]

I am not an expert (no kids yet, only remembering my own childhood as well as younger siblings, cousins and some tutoring experience) but I think it's quite hard to make an 11 yo understand that "school is important" in such a theoretical fashion (and something like carreer choices in his 20s are completely theoretical him).

The only chances are to be interested in either the content of the particular subject (this is of course the best way) or want to be good at something for the kicks (or for being better than others, a somewhat ambiguous trait...)

He probably enjoyed being top of class without an effort but apparently not enough to make an effort to get there again.

It seems perfectly normal to spend only so much effort as is necessary to be "good enough". I guess in former times the trick was to make at least the better schools so hard that "good enough" was still pretty good and required some effort.

 

Try to get him interested in something besides D&D manuals, say historical fiction or books about history or mythology for children/teenagers.

[MisterOJ]

Hey Whitestripe,

 

The similarities of our experiences continues. My eldest daughter, age 11, started 6th grade at a new school a couple weeks back. (Yes, that's right, she started on July 29. Crazy.) Anyway, she is in a new school district now and went from a low performing school, where she had it easy to a high-performing school that is really pushing her. Last year, she rarely had homework. With the beginning of last week, she has had homework every night. She just got back her first math test on Monday. She got an 85. At her old school, that would have been a solid B. Her new school uses a tougher grading scale (94-100 is an A, 87-93 is a B, etc.) and the fact that she got a C on her first test was just a huge blow to her.

 

She's always put in enough effort before, but now she has to put in a lot more. And I can tell it's already starting to wear on her. She is so Type A and wants to be the best so bad, but yesterday was the first time I've heard her talk about "giving up" because it's "too hard." That was worrisome. Right now, I'm just going to let it ride (while continuing to encourage her ) and hope that it gets better once she adjusts. Because, really, what else can I do?

 

And I realize I am no help whatsoever in your own situation. But, I do sympathize. Starting at a new school is hard at this age. My daughter had a lot of advantages and she is still having a really tough time. So, I feel for ya. I got no answers, but I empathisize.

[Grayce Hornwood]

Not saying this is the answer for everyone, but my parents resorted to a reward system.

 

$10 for every A, and if I got straight As in every class, at the end of the semester we would go to the zoo or an amusement park.

$5 for every B, $2 for every C.

 

No reward for Ds or Fs, so I made sure never to get those.

 

I don't have any kids yet, so I can't imagine what it's like to be in the position of the parent.

[Whitestripe]

OJ: The simlarities are uncanny, aren't they? (and I totally thought of you when I bought my 9-year-old a swimsuit for our recent beach vacation after being horrified that the one she first tried was cut to resemble cups on top!)  The reason we moved LAST year was so Henry especially would have one year in the hight performing elementary school (where there is a certain amount of hand holding) before being forced to organize himself in middle school.

 

Jo: He used to read all the time. Now, not so much. We went to the library before our recent vacation and he brought home 14 books because he wanted to read them all. He read for the entire cross-country plane trip...he just won't do it because I've told him it's an assignment for school.  Oh and Chemistry, he got a 100 on that entire science unit because they made stuff explode in the lab.

[MisterOJ]

OJ: The simlarities are uncanny, aren't they? (and I totally thought of you when I bought my 9-year-old a swimsuit for our recent beach vacation after being horrified that the one she first tried was cut to resemble cups on top!)  The reason we moved LAST year was so Henry especially would have one year in the hight performing elementary school (where there is a certain amount of hand holding) before being forced to organize himself in middle school.

 

Too funny about the swimsuit! You know I can so relate. I'm sorta blessed because Emily (my 11 year old) wants nothing to do with the skimpy swimsuits many of her friends wear now. She just wants a rash guard top with a matching bottom. Done. And Molly (my 9-year-old) has decided (after going through a phase where she really liked bikinis) that she prefers sporty one-piece Speedo type suits. So, hooray for that.

 

I did think of something that may make you feel a bit better about Henry's situation, though. Last school year, after a few weeks, we discovered how Molly was just putting in the barest minimum of effort at her low-performing school. She was in a class full of kids that were mostly all much lower than her and wasn't being pushed at all, and she sure wasn't pushing herself. So we moved her last year to the high performing school that Emily just started. And it worked really well. She had a hard time at first, but what we soon realized is that it was a high performing school because the teachers and staff found a way to motivate bright, but not terribly motivated kids like Molly into doing well. It was really cool some of the things they came up. Like, they encouraged AR reading by giving the kids a periodic party (with Popsicles, or ice cream sundaes, or watermelon) for kids that did the "optional" reading. And guess what? Just about every single kid did. 

 

One other thing that we realized with her being at a high performing school - it is actually "cool" there to be smart and get good grades. At her old school, getting good grades wasn't uncool per se, but getting bad grades and not performing well did not make you an "outsider" at all. And that appears to be the case to a certain degree at the new school. Molly feels like in order to fit in, she needs to do well in school; and that has been a great motivator for her.

[Kat]

So I've had to read this book about 50 million times for various things, but he might get something from Mindsets. Actually I can save you the money and sum it up in a few sentences. The idea is that successful students have the growth mindset that the most important thing is how much effort and practice you put in, so you reward effort rather than results. The opposite of that is the fixed mindset, where students think that success comes from having innate ability, so if they do well at something, it's because they are smart, and if they don't do well, it's because they aren't smart enough. IIRC the book has chapters on how to cultivate a growth mindset in your kid if you're a parent, which it sounds like you're trying to do already, but it might give you some strategies.

 

I use it as a teacher, because I have the unfortunate task of teaching a class meant for 11th graders to 9th graders who frequently come in below grade level in math and just want to give up immediately when they see their results. So I have a lot of conversations like this:

 

Student: I got 5/10 on your first quiz. I'm going to be terrible at this class. I'm bad at math.

Me: Did you know anything about physics before you took this class?

Student: No.

Me: Then your efforts have made it so you learned half of what this quiz is asking for. The good news is, you can do test corrections and get points back for correcting the parts you didn't get, so you can learn that material as well.

Student: But that's a lot of work.

Me: Yes, and by doing the work you will improve your grade, because that's how this class is set up.

 

Gotta run to work. More later.

[Whitestripe]

Kat: Yes! We have had many conversations about the expectation of effort, not grades. We also say that we KNOW that he's a smart kid, so effort will most likely result in good grades.  We've also had conversations about why extra credit is important and why you don't start a project the night before it's due.  He often says "Well, I know I got an 82 but XX got a 68!"  My response is that I don't care who got a 68 or even who got a 102. Did he really think he only knew 82% of the material, especially if he got 10 points off for not reading the instructions carefully enough.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Kat: Yes! We have had many conversations about the expectation of effort, not grades. We also say that we KNOW that he's a smart kid, so effort will most likely result in good grades.  We've also had conversations about why extra credit is important and why you don't start a project the night before it's due.  He often says "Well, I know I got an 82 but XX got a 68!"  My response is that I don't care who got a 68 or even who got a 102. Did he really think he only knew 82% of the material, especially if he got 10 points off for not reading the instructions carefully enough.

 

I was a smart lazy student in middle school and high school (and sort of in college, but "smart" is relative), and I was motivated primarily by competition (I wanted to prove I was the smartest in the class) and fear of my parents yelling at me. Intrinsic motivation is hard to come by and my best advice would be to find a WW who got a 102 for him to compare himself to.

[AverageGuy]

We also say that we KNOW that he's a smart kid, so effort will most likely result in good grades.

Telling kids they're smart enough to do it doesn't ever seem to work. Not sure why. Trying to stress the effort-based logic sometimes does though.

[Iskaral Pust]

Our son, turning 9 in a couple of months and entering 3rd grade, is a very high performing student and we make a big effort to constantly reinforce motivation and focus.  The grade school curriculum is not very challenging in the US and smart kids learn early that they can coast.  Even at his excellent private school with a student body from the upper professional class, I think they set the bar too low.  Skipping grades is very tricky for social development.  So we've worked with his teachers to set him homework for his grade and for the grade ahead.  And we work with him at home on more advanced topics, particularly in math.

 

But there is still a danger during each school year that he starts to get complacent and starts to coast a bit, while still getting everything right.  And we periodically have to reinforce his need to push himself.  Both my wife and I grew up in less well-off families and had a clear and constant message that success in school would be necessary, whereas our son will never have that background fear.

 

Some of the specific things we do:

- emphasize effort and doing his best work rather than grade or test score received.

- foster a competitive spirit (although this can have drawbacks if he links self-worth with being the smartest)

- strongly encourage reading challenging books and support it by getting books with interesting subject matter and variety

- restrict some of the stuff he loves to spend time on, e.g. Minecraft time is strictly rationed and must be earned; comics (Asterix, Tintin, Calvin & Hobbes) are forbidden for long periods because he just reads them to the exclusion of all else

- work with him at home on academic projects that are far ahead of his class material and require greater effort from him

- ensure that he has at least an hour per day of homework to do in order to make hard work an ingrained habit, not an occasional chore to complain about.

- peripheral learning that requires additional effort and engagement without feeling like school, e.g. learning a musical instrument or another language(s)

 

At a young ages it's not about what the kid is learning, it's what kind of mental capabilities and work habits are they establishing.  I don't actually care what score he gets on a test so long as he has learned how to approach problems, analyze and think critically, how to interpret text and extrapolate insights, how to communicate and express himself effectively, how to think creatively and synthesize ideas and a work ethic to push himself.

 

 

Edit to add: we also don't let our son watch much TV, usually only an hour on Saturdays, or spend much time on screens in general (40 mins of Minecraft per week) so he spends most of his spare time in self-directed, imaginative free play, which is also a very good way for him to explore his own ideas and enthusiasms, and allow his mind to relax after study and pull together different bits and pieces.  Your brain does a lot of development in downtime.  TV is a mind-killer for kids.

[Angalin]

I tell the twins that they are capable and that I expect them to deliver. Also that if they want to be awesome, they have to put in the work and show up every day. Yes, one day's "best" might be different from the next day's for a number of reasons, but "best" is what you aim for every day. Grade 7 (year 7) starts in less than a month and they're going to have to put in the work.

 

They get a little cuckoo sometimes, but they've also seen that when they do make the effort (eg studying for a spelling test), the results are better than when they fiddle around or coast. [eta: They like how it feels when they get good marks.] I coasted through all of school and university, then got down to business a few years ago. Now it helps that they've seen me do homework for my courses.

 

2nd eta: Iskaral, almost everything I know about ancient Rome I learned from Asterix. Calvin is a chancy role model, however. 

[Jaxom 1974]

*WAUGH!*

You guys aren't encouraging me for my future and Little Jax had been in kindergarten for all of two days!

[Kat]

Kat: Yes! We have had many conversations about the expectation of effort, not grades. We also say that we KNOW that he's a smart kid, so effort will most likely result in good grades.  We've also had conversations about why extra credit is important and why you don't start a project the night before it's due.  He often says "Well, I know I got an 82 but XX got a 68!"  My response is that I don't care who got a 68 or even who got a 102. Did he really think he only knew 82% of the material, especially if he got 10 points off for not reading the instructions carefully enough.

 

See if his teacher can point out someone who is doing well specifically because they are studying hard. I often have to do this for students. If they think someone else is doing it without trying, then show that the other student is taking really good notes, listening in class, etc. Sure, to be fair there's also differences between kids in motivation, attention, memory, etc. but most of the stuff you learn in middle school you can get through just doing the work and studying a bit.

 

 

I will admit that I've had lazy times in my life, usually because nothing I was learning was interesting me. The good news is that at that age it really doesn't matter what you're reading as long as you're reading something. It sounds like he's pretty good at reading informational text as long as he's interested in the subject. That will take you a pretty long way. My summer reading lists rarely contained books that I was interested in, so I would read the bare minimum while also reading other things that never counted for that, mostly non-fiction. I started reading fiction extensively on my own in college once I no longer had the stigma against genre literature that my high school teachers had. I was in honors English classes based mostly on my ability to write clearly, rather than because of any great reading skills however, because I wasn't interested in the books we read, I never did very well in class. What saved me was that I was extremely interested in science, and would put in a lot of effort to learn more about it on my own and in class and did what I needed to do to get into college for science. Is there something that he does like that you can pursue him to do more of? Is there some other thing that he does where there is a clear link between effor/practice and success? For instance, D&D isn't a great game example because it relies too much on rolling the dice, but any little game where you just practice and grind away and repeatedly fail until you get better is analogous.

 

Re: math. Teaching others is an excellent way to get good at it, because you have to be able to explain a problem in a bunch of different ways, which is very much aligned with what Common Core asks for. The thing that made everyone come to me for help in physics in high school wasn't my reading about it, but the part where I explained science topics to visitors at a museum for my high school job, which made me better at communicating concepts, which gave me a better understanding overall. If your son likes it, it's a good way to build and solidify skills, especially if he ever tutors things he doesn't quite understand. Re: brain teasers, it's possible that the ones he got in math club are too hard to be useful for him, or not interesting. If you give someone a problem that is 100% doable, then it's probably trivial/boring. If you give someone something where they don't have most of the knowledge/skills they need to solve it, it's not doable and then also boring. In order to learn and for something to be interesting to learn, it should be partially doable, but if his skills don't overlap with the problem much (or the problem itself just is boring/irrelevant) then he'll see that most of his effort is running up against a wall and the problems aren't worth it. It might be useful to get books of puzzles (I had some kids' mystery books around that age that had a variety of puzzles in them) that are within reach for him so he can gain some confidence.

[Gillio]

re maths we got this book for our boys  it seemed to help

 

I can never remember its name

[Maya Mia]

My youngest son accidentally admitted to me when he was in about 7th grade that during math tests he calculates in his head how many problems he needs to get wrong so he can keep his grade at a high B / low A. I was shocked, he was deliberately writing down wrong answers.  His reasoning was that if he got higher grades, they would move him into the advanced math classes - he was perfectly happy in the middle level math.  In advanced classes he would have to work.

 

Unfortunately for him, in 8th grade we moved to another school district, two weeks into the year his math teacher called me and said this child really should be in the advanced class, he already knows everything he is being taught.

 

I warned them he will fail the first couple tests, he would do it on purpose, and to not believe him when he tells them he doesn't understand.  We forced him to stick with the advanced classes, eventually he got tired of fighting it, and his test grades improved.  He is about to enter 10th grade this year, and is still in the higher level math classes, but still gets high Bs low As.

[Jo498]

Give him Asterix en francais or latine ;)

My brother claims that one reason he was doing very well (despite being as lazy as they come) in his advanced English (foreign language) class, was that he had played language-heavy computer RPGs from his early teens on, and he also read some fantasy tomes in English in his mid-teens)

[Whitestripe]

Thanks guys. School starts here on Sept 8, and I am just trying to anticipate (based on last year). Just a little background, I live in a very small college town. There is one elementary school, and several of the kids in his class that have know each other (and been competing against each other) since they were toddlers.  He was in pre-school (on the college campus) with many of these kids but we lived outside of town so he went to a different school.  We have since moved into town and into the district. It's taken him an entire year to warm up to the boys in his grade and make friends with them.

 

Maya Mia: Last week, we had several friends at our house. I was talking to two of them who have sons a year older than ours. One (a Ph.D. and college professor) said her son had been placed in Honors math but declined to take the class. He said he didn't want to work that hard, and she was absolutely flabbergasted. Had no idea how to approach that.

 

Kat: Thanks for the advice.  Now that I have insisted he read more, he's gone through the entire  [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Magic] Circle of Magic[/url] series in 1.5 weeks. However, this was our conversation last night.

Me: You have to do this (very short) report for two books you've read this summer. Each report is 25 points and it' 10% of your first ELA grade.  You can do up to five books for extra credit. Each extra credit is 5 points. Why not do a report for all the books you've read this summer. I know you read [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin:_The_Cross_of_Lead] Crispin [/url] and some Circle of Magic books.

 

Henzo: I read all the Circle of Magic books, but I am only doing two reports, That's what it says you have to do.

 

Me: Yes, but if you've already READ the books, why not fill out the sheets to get extra points?

 

Henzo: Because it says I don't  *HAVE* to. I only HAVE to do two reports.

 

Me: But I say you do.

[Angalin]

Thanks guys. School starts here on Sept 8, and I am just trying to anticipate (based on last year). Just a little background, I live in a very small college town. There is one elementary school, and several of the kids in his class that have know each other (and been competing against each other) since they were toddlers.  He was in pre-school (on the college campus) with many of these kids but we lived outside of town so he went to a different school.  We have since moved into town and into the district. It's taken him an entire year to warm up to the boys in his grade and make friends with them.

 

Maya Mia: Last week, we had several friends at our house. I was talking to two of them who have sons a year older than ours. One (a Ph.D. and college professor) said her son had been placed in Honors math but declined to take the class. He said he didn't want to work that hard, and she was absolutely flabbergasted. Had no idea how to approach that.

 

Kat: Thanks for the advice.  Now that I have insisted he read more, he's gone through the entire  Circle of Magic series in 1.5 weeks. However, this was our conversation last night.

Me: You have to do this (very short) report for two books you've read this summer. Each report is 25 points and it' 10% of your first ELA grade.  You can do up to five books for extra credit. Each extra credit is 5 points. Why not do a report for all the books you've read this summer. I know you read Crispin  and some Circle of Magic books.

 

Henzo: I read all the Circle of Magic books, but I am only doing two reports, That's what it says you have to do.

 

Me: Yes, but if you've already READ the books, why not fill out the sheets to get extra points?

 

Henzo: Because it says I don't  *HAVE* to. I only HAVE to do two reports.

 

Me: But I say you do.

I have been known to offer homeschooling to my children when they get cranky about schoolwork. They buckle down in a hurry, because I'm a much more demanding teacher than they've ever had at school. (Actual conversation with a friend: "am I a Tiger Mother?" "No, you're a WASP." "Oh right.")

[Whitestripe]

If I were to homeschool, you would hear about it on CNN Headline News: Upstate NY mother stabs Child, then herself with compass point.  Bodies found slumped over open history book. Full story at 11.  

 

Seriously though, I just had both of them do a summer skills math problem set. This was given to us by the school and is supposed to be at grade level. 3.5 seconds later, Henry has done all the remaining pages in the workbook and they are all correct (I told them that the two assigned sheets have to be done correctly before we can go to the farmer's market) He can do this without even thinking at the end of the summer and yet, he can't be bothered to get an A in the class?