In many successful classrooms, students encounter math, biology, or literature, and the teacher shapes and guides and evaluates that encounter without becoming the center of the classroom experience. Many of us have understood the wisdom of the positive “guide on the side” approach to learning, rather than the “sage on the stage” trap. We don’t want our classrooms to become a stage for how great we are as teachers – we want our classrooms to be more about our students. Often we need to get out of the way, to make more space for the students and books and the ideas.

 
Yet this more modest approach to teaching tends to work best when students are either already interested in the particular content in the class (“I just love math!”), or enter the room with enough discipline and external motivation to make the class work even if they don’t have much passion for the subject. Interestingly, these students will do well in most classrooms, with any of a wide range of techniques and any of a wide range of teachers, because they start the exchange great motivation.

 
But a lot of students don’t fit that model. They’re ambivalent, unmotivated, ready to do only the minimum required to get done with the strictures of school. For these students, motivation is the key. They don’t bring their own with them.

 
Most schools spend a lot of time getting students motivated – we dispense both carrots (high grades, special privileges, public praise), and sticks (low grades, threats of dismissal, embarrassment for poor performance). Meanwhile, that typical sketch of the forces in the classroom leaves out a major tool for changing the student’s motivation. With the teacher standing back, letting the curriculum speak in some ways for itself, the student is left with the usual reasons to love – or not love – algebra, or The Iliad, or the War of 1812. But if the chart shifts, and the student and the teacher connect more directly, with the teacher then leading the student to the subject, there’s a lot more room for magic to happen and the student’s motivation to leap up.
Try this experiment. Find a couple of typical middle- or high-school students. Ask what their favorite subjects are, and then ask why.

 

In my experience, about half the time, the first answer the student will offer has nothing to do with the subject, but everything to do with the teacher. Why do you love algebra? Because Miss Temes is amazing. Why is European history your favorite class this year? Because Mr. Franke is my favorite teacher. Why are you suddenly doing so well in music? Because Mr. Williams told me my sound is so good, I can get a big scholarship if I stick with it. (And here’s the real kicker: “I had no idea my sound was so good.”)

 
The big opportunity here is for the teacher to be a leader of individual students – to build a direct relationship of mutual trust and respect, and then to demonstrate passionate interest in the subject being taught. Through the relationship with the teacher – which in many ways must be in the foreground, not the background – the student learns to trust the teacher, and follow the teacher’s lead for personal reasons, specifically because of that relationship.

 
And then the teacher turns to the subject and essentially says, “Wow. This is great.” The student follows, and invests the subject with the interest and desire to succeed taken in part from that relationship with the teacher. Student and teacher connect and build trust – that creates more potential motivation for the student; it builds the fundamental readiness to be motivated. And then the teacher leads the student to the subject – now seeing the subject with greater interest and hoping to perform well as an act that will honor the relationship with the teacher. It’s personal, and it has to be real.

 
And that personal connection runs both ways. Jane Bluestein, a former Pittsburgh teacher, wrote this a few years ago:

“I would come this close to throwing in the towel when a child would uncharacteristically come to class prepared, make a positive behavioral change or help a classmate. I’d be sure I couldn’t make it through the day when someone would suddenly get subtraction or appear excited about a subject we were about to discuss. And just as I was about to give up, they’d finally sit still for a story or laugh at one of my jokes.” Former Pittsburgh teacher, visible writer and commentator on teaching.”