Warning: This article describes a strategy that is controversial.
It’s not controversial for us here at SCM. It’s something we’ve been doing and recommending for many years. However, the education establishment is aghast at our approach.
For example, the standard advice when a student doesn’t do anything during independent work time is to rush to their side. More specifically, it’s to . . .
- Kneel down next to them.
- Ask why they aren’t working.
- Offer help to do the work.
- Explain the assignment’s importance.
- Give them a motivational talk.
- Assign them a work partner.
- Whisper encouragement.
- Lecture them harshly.
- Give them a consequence.
- Keep them in for recess.
- Force them to explain themselves.
- Promise a reward in exchange for the work.
You get the idea. It’s what 95 percent of teachers do. The result is that although occasionally you may coax some production from them temporarily, it makes them more resistant and less independent over time.
Anything and everything you do directly—as in approaching and engaging with the student—is bound to fail. Because it doesn’t come from within the student.
This is key.
Motivation and desire to do the work must come from them. It must be their choice and of their volition. It’s the only way that works. Furthermore, when it derives from within, it’s real and sustaining.
The big question of course is how? How can you as the teacher create conditions whereby motivation to work happens naturally, even among students who hate school and don’t see any value in it?
The answer is both simple and profound. The first step is to stop approaching the student. Remove one-to-one contact entirely. Refrain from using any of the strategies listed above or their equivalency.
Instead, let them just sit there. That’s right. Once you send your students off to do their independent work, you’re finished speaking or offering additional help.
This alone makes them uncomfortable in the very best way—because it shifts 100 percent of the responsibility to do the work over to them, where it belongs and begins to do its good work. You’re not there any longer to ease the burden or behave as if it matters to you more than them.
Which communicates loud and clear, “You’re in this on your own.”
The second part is that all of your students must know the stakes of not trying. Nothing can be hidden from them. Thus, they need, as a class, constant reminders of their purpose for being in school and how it’s for their benefit and no one else’s.
Whether you think they care or not (deep down they do), they deserve to know the truth of how a lack of education all but guarantees a life of profound struggle, financial hardship, and dissatisfaction.
They need to know that you will not inflate any grade. You will mark the exact score they earned on their report card, essay, math assignment, reading assessment, etc.
While the first and second steps are student responsibilities entirely, the third and final step is yours alone.
If you’re a long-time follower of SCM, then you know that it is your one true and most important responsibility. No, it’s not to kneel down and reteach to individual students what you taught the entire class minutes before.
It’s not to beg, plead, or threaten them. It’s not to counsel them individually, fudge their grades, or offer them excuses why they’re failing.
It’s to teach compelling lessons.
It’s to present something interesting, weird, cool, funny, surprising, scary, heartbreaking, or otherwise noteworthy, involve them in the experience, and then check for understanding so thoroughly that they’re capable of writing the essay, solving for x, or performing the experiment all on their own.
Do this every day. Get really good at it. And you’ll never again have students sitting and doing nothing.
Yes, they may try in the beginning of the school year because it’s been embedded so strongly and deeply into their mentality by the teachers who came before you.
But it won’t last. Because doing for oneself, if set free to, is human nature. Once the switch is flipped and those intrinsic engines start spinning, they can’t sit and stare and not do work even if they tried.
The weightiness of purpose and responsibility, coupled with their growing success and accomplishment, is too flippin’ strong.
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If this isn’t confirmation for me!!! Thank you so much!!! I feel like the teachers before me ‘supported’ (if that’s what we will call it) so much that it has crippled the students. They look for me to give answers and even ask ‘what do I write here?’ It’s scary. This year is a big adjustment for them because I do not give answers and I told them they must listen during instruction. I’m teaching the lesson once and no one-on-one. If they don’t get it they have to ask a classmate and they better hope that person knows…because now it will be the 2 of them doing it wrong. There is another disrupter in my class that stems from the previous year…but I’ll keep it at that for now. They will learn in my class this year!!!
This seems to make sense but what are learning support assistants/teaching assistants supposed to do?
Play on their phone or work on their mountain of useless paperwork probably. Or worse undermine your efforts by coddling them.
Good article but I don’t agree that “keeping them in at recess” doesn’t work. I teach elementary grades 3-6 and my students know that any work that is not completed in class must be completed during recess time (my student’s favorite time) until they are finished-this is a natural consequence in my book. My students learn quickly that because I apply consistently this consequence that they have to “get to work and focus” in my class-this is the expectation. Also, another consequence is that there is an immediate phone call home the same day to parents to let them know that work is not being completed. It’s all about teaching responsibility and good time management.
I agree. If reporting to parents on work completion is a way down the track, parents don’t want to find out late that their children haven’t been bothered to do the work. Also, if they’re not made to work they are more likely to to be misbehaving.
Same here.
I agree.
What about a kid who just takes longer than the others? Do they lose their recess time everyday?
2nd grade teacher here. I agree. At this age, grades on report card don’t mean a lot to them, especially right away. We talk in-depth about grades and the importance of them but they aren’t as concerned as their parents are. The only thing that has worked every time is being kept in for recess. The kids know that it is their choice to do the work. They also know that it is their own recess they miss out on if they choose to not do the work.
Good strategies to select from but it needs one to use emotional intelligence selection considering the Bella act policy .
If I fail a student for not doing their work, it won’t be them who faced financial hardship, it will be me.
One of the main reasons I have three years left, though I am 18 years from retirement.
Keep faith problems can be solved! Without that constant working to solving problems in any career, the status quo will never be changed. It takes teamwork and collaboration and not going it alone, but problems can be solved, step by step, methodically, if and only if one believes it is possible and keeps thinking, adapting and trying.
How so?
I really hope this is true. It would be such a better classroom environment if so. I am currently a teacher in training (34 years old decided to make a career change into secondary math education). I very much align with your thinking and advice on classroom management. I am planning to work as a substitute teacher in high schools in the meantime as a way of gaining classroom management skills and familiarity in the classroom. Do you think this is a good idea for getting my feet wet? Or might it be a bad idea to get into the travails of substitute teaching and better off just beginning as full time teacher who is in charge of the lessons given and whatnot. Do you have any advice on the essential differences between substitute teaching and being a subject teacher as far as classroom management goes? As a substitute teacher I most often do not have the lever of presenting a compelling lesson plan to the students and instead just assign what was given by the subject teacher. Thank you so much for your advice, I have bought many of your books and hope to implement them as a full time teacher soon enough.
I subbed for awhile before getting my license and think it was the best education I got! Do it! You’ll learn soooo much.
Teaching is one of the most difficult but rewarding jobs, and more important even than being a doctor, in my opinion. Don’t take misbehavior personally, stay pleasant when kids mess up and things will improve. I did like you in being a substitute after stopping teaching to teach my own four kids, and then back to it when youngest started school. Even now i am an interventionist and paid less and don’t have the “status” of a regular one class teacher. I have interruptions of 7-10 new groups and lesson plans to prep a day. Managing people is hard, especially children. But i still know that what i do matters. It does.
Thank you Michael! I started implementing your strategies in my 3rd grade class this year as a 4th year teacher, and the difference in behavior, productivity, and stress (for me and the students) is incredible.
I love the advice in this article, but I have a question about how to square it with my class rules. I adopted your suggested rule #1 “Listen and follow directions.” So, for example, if I tell all of the kids to work on a certain page in their math books, if a student doesn’t get their math book out and just sits there I should leave them alone? Or, I do enforce a consequence if they don’t get the proper materials out(since they wouldn’t be following directions), but if they simply don’t pick up a pencil to work or put their head down, I leave them alone?
I was going to ask this same question!
I mean, in theory this works. Perhaps it works in elementary? In middle school and high school I have encountered many students who just don’t care whether they fail. Yes there are consequences and yes they will fail and they simply don’t care. I don’t have any interest in begging them to work but I will go up to them and very firmly say, “this is what we are working on right now and it is time for you to do it. Get out your [worksheet, notes, book] and do this.”
Agree. I have HS and there are a few who are completely content to sit and stare at the wall instead of completing their work, no matter how compelling my teaching may be 🙂
Hello Michael, your article came at the perfect moment. I have the biggest situation of a student not wanting to do anything ever. My big question now is while I am trying to teach, especially during small groups (I teach 4th grade), he will just start playing around and disrupt the other students. So how do I keep him engaged so I can teach when he is not willing to do anything??? Please help!
Though I agree with this to a point, the overwhelming number of students content to live like their parents on assistance and under the table work makes this somewhat unrealistic. They aren’t really seeing negative consequences of a limited education. What’s happening in society doesn’t allow them to see the true difficulties.
The only issue I’m having with the few who won’t work is that they don’t want to leave others alone so they can. I’ve set up my classroom management plan just as you taught me, and they are very clear about the plan. However, they sometimes simply won’t comply in addition to no work. Frustrating.
The other day, I stood next to student to “supervise” them and help him . What a mistake. The previous day, I noticed the student was “fake” reading and taking online quizzes by guessing. I was met with an all out meltdown with tears and everything. I was reassigned, “Thank God.”
Yesterday, I worked with higher elementary grade. The teacher taught and explained the topics. Then I explained the assignment and asked questions until they said “I know” or “I got it.”
I personally have to reread instructions and the assignments so I don’t believe its bad to reteach or provide guidance to those who need it. Especially if its a new concept.
Agree. Learning is a process, not a one-size fits all approach. To ‘teach’ content once and/or give instructions once is not teaching. Nor is it effective to call parents if a child fails to complete work. Such practices raise concern about the teacher preparation, pedagogy and childhood development training. Are such practices supported by research and evidence-based practices?
This article represent a starting point to motivate students and make use of teachers’ experience. It presents a refreshing and thought-provoking perspective on student motivation and independence. It challenges the traditional, over-involved approach many teachers take and instead emphasizes the power of intrinsic motivation. By shifting responsibility back to students, the author highlights how true learning and accountability must come from within. The message is clear: when lessons are engaging, expectations consistent, and support balanced with autonomy, students naturally take ownership of their learning. It’s a powerful reminder that sometimes the best way to help is to step back and let students discover their own drive to succeed.
I somewhat agree. I feel like you have to have discernment with different approaches per student. Some students need a pep talk and that really works for me. I do agree with some need to just be left alone. My advice, use wisdom.
I’m not so sure I agree with this approach for every student. What about your kids with ADHD who truly have difficulty starting and finishing a task? Are they supposed to miss their recess everyday? I do not believe sitting in their desk and missing recess will change their ability to focus.
What does this look like in a classroom?
One of the elements that leads to the creation of personality is a realization that “I’m on my own.” This is nearly always left to a random decision about what to do about it from the perspective of the child. I suggest that the missing ingredient is for the teacher to offer or to coach the student towards an empowering decision abut this that is their own. This very rarely happens. Children suddenly have the thought “I’m on my own!” and conclude that they need to be a certain way to compensate. You can think back o your own experience of this when you were young or imagine what a child might come up with as a response that the becomes embedded in their subconscious as something that “works.” Without our support, they will draw references from social media, games, parental behaviors, peer behavior, behaviors of peer’s parents, television and movies.
From my own personal experience: I was 4 years old when I picked up a cat outside the swimming pool and it raked its claws across my chest. I ran home crying and when I got inside, I realized nobody was home. I had a shocking realization that I was one my own. I stopped crying (just a 4-year old’s way of communicating), washed the scratches with a washcloth and sat down to wait for my mom to return. I was proud of myself and remember thinking “I don’t need help from anyone. I can do it all by myself!” So, I spent the next 25 years absolutely refusing to ask for help from anyone no matter how urgent the need. Why? Because subconsciously “I didn’t need help from anyone. I could do it all myself!”
Why not share some ideas that take this into account? If the student needs help and doesn’t know how to ask or is afraid to ask and we say “You’re in this on your own.” Imagine the possibilities: “Then I will steal someone else’s work. I can’t count on the teacher or myself to solve a problem. Alright, I got this – I can figure it out on my own.” So many possibilities and none of them have to make any sense, because this is the mind of child.
You’ve opened up a great topic and one for which there is no single right answer. If there was, there would be no need for the conversation.
As a daily substitue, grades 1-8, in a high performing suburban district, I have a method that works for me (I’m not saying it’s a long-term solution for pro teachers)
When a student is just sitting there, making no attempt to do any work, I hand them a paper that says:
Dear Mrs. [name of their real teacher],
I decided not to do any work during math today.
Signed,
X_________________
It works about 90% of the time. I use it sparingly. Mostly at the MS.
When (rarely) an 8th grader refuses to sign it, I reply, “It’s important to have the courage of your beliefs. If it’s your belief that you shouldn’t work like the rest of your classmates, then have the courage to sign this document.”
If one wants to use this tactic, I would add another step. I would say to the student, “I will give you a few minutes to think about signing this message, and then I’ll come back to you.” Next, I would turn and walk away. Kids need time to cogitate about their actions. It is never a good idea to back kids, or anyone for that matter, into a corner. I am betting that said student will start working. Give them the opportunity to “save face” and choose to work so they can feel good about themselves. Personally, I wouldn’t approach the student again. I would act as if he is like any other child in the classroom, doing his work to the best of his ability.
When I sub, I bring along a folded sheet of paper with writing on it. After I introduce myself to the class, I say, “Your teacher left me a note and I want to read it to you.” The room always becomes very quiet because the kids want to hear what this “private” message says. After unfolding the sheet of paper, this is what I read: “Dear Mrs. Marchi, thank you for subbing for me today. I want you to know that this class is one of the best group of kids that I have ever had. I am so lucky to be their teacher. They are smart, hard-working and respectful. If you have a question about our daily routine, ask any of my students; they love to help. If you should have a problem with a student, please leave me a message so I can talk to him or her. But I doubt you’ll have to–they are that good!” After reading this message, I look at the class and take a few moments to watch their reaction. It is so fun to see their wide-eyed smiles and the pride in all of their faces. They seem surprised and honored to be acknowledged in this way. The rest of the day goes smoothly for me.