A Student Dilemma...

How do you make plans for the future if you don’t know what it is that you want to do ???

The answer of course is

‘you wouldn’t…!’, ‘you wouldn’t do anything unless you had a reason to do it…’

Seriously,

• You wouldn’t get dressed unless you had somewhere to go
• You wouldn’t eat your dinner unless you were hungry and … equally
• You wouldn’t get into a taxi just for the view !!! That would seem mad !!

BUT, people get transfixed by what they want to DO and less of who they want to BE. I‘ll explain.

ONE simple FACT

Most people don’t know what they want to do when they leave school. Most of us grown-ups don’t even know what we want to do and we’ve been around loads longer !!

BUT, I bet you know who you want to BE….

ANOTHER simple FACT

People know who they want to BE…

People always have a vision about what they aspire to look like, behave, holiday, friends, hairstyle etc…. it’s perfectly normal.

So, for me it was simple…

1. I wanted to be successful
2. I wanted to look good
3. I wanted to have a nice car
4. I wanted to own a house
5. I wanted to be married
6. I wanted to have kids
7. I wanted to look have fun
8. I wanted to go on expensive holidays

NOW, whilst some of these things are not quite so TRUE today (I didn’t even mention my health), they were then…

And, when you know who you want to be then you normally have some clarity about what it is that you need to do to get there….

For example, I can still easily BE all of the above whether I’m a doctor or an accountant or a business owner. The point being that just because your job changes (what you do), you can still achieve your ambitions doing something else (what you want to be).

ONE more simple FACT

People change their minds !!

This is normal – who doesn’t change their mind in their life, we all do. I did and I’m sure you did too. What is good for you at the age of 16 is unlikely to good for you at 36.

So, planning for the future is actually straight forward enough if you focus on who you want to be and less what you want to do….

Kids Don't Come with Batteries Included

Q: Is it the role of teachers to motivate students?
A: You decide?

That’s not a cop out… BUT, one teacher once told me “I taught them, they just didn’t learn it”.

Where does the learning start and where does it end?

If I was a comedian and I told you “I was funny, but , they just didn’t laugh !!”. Is that true?

Or the salesman who said “I sold it them, they just didn’t buy it”. Surely the true measurement is in the result of what we said we did.

My previous marriage – I might have said “yeah, I loved my wife – BUT, did she feel loved?”…. you’d have to ask her !!!

So, going back to the teacher who said, “I taught them, they just didn’t learn”. That doesn’t quite stack up. So, how do you motivate students to learn then?

The techniques people often use…

Competition – This is a good thing BUT it’s good to realize that it doesn’t work for all kids. The reality is, the only person who is truly motivated by competition is the person who thinks he/she has a chance of winning!

Rewards don’t always work either, if the child is having difficulty. All reward systems are based on the concept that the child CAN DO IT, he just chooses NOT TO. That’s great if you know they’re not really trying.

Punishment is not normally very effective way because it takes the child’s favourite thing, whether it be a football or a skateboard, and take it away from him when they’re bad. Marriages even break up over sex or money, and it’s because one spouse takes the thing that the other spouse wants and uses it to manipulate the other person. You’re basically saying “I’ll give it to you when you’re good, and I won’t when you’re bad.” So if it doesn’t work with adults maybe it might not be all that effective with kids?

So, what do I do to motivate?
The NINE RULES here I have made up are inspired by the author Richard Lovoie.

Play – Have fun, enjoy, enthuse and bring energy to the room.
“No-one ever achieved anything without enthusiasm” Emerson

Personal – School is about life.
• Indulge your students and listen to their stories.
• Indulge yourself – Share your stories with them… if it benefits them?

Provoke – Ask questions about life, ask questions about the topic – it gets them to think… It’s powerful when they get to see things through their own mind !

Praise – Catch People Doing Things Right. Be focused on praise BUT be specific and sincere. The praise should be focused on effort and improvement – this is always effective. We all need to feel good enough.

Power. Letting your students determine some of the agenda or make certain rules gets them to feel like they’re ‘in charge’ without you losing control.

Projects. These are very powerful mechanisms for connecting different skills and knowledge and harnessing natural curiosity.

Positive People. This gets them to learn quickly how to behave in a positive manner.

Prizes. Rewards can be powerful when they are unannounced and not too familiar. The prize may be as innocuous or humorous as you like.

Prestige. All children need to feel important, and some more than others, so prestige and recognition are fundamental. Consistent encouragement and opportunities to showcase these talents are important.

That’s it… These techniques are NOT magic as you can see, they’re just ways of keeping people focused when their natural attention wanes. It’s incredibly powerful and effective and it’s a lot of fun…

What Motivates the Motivator

What motivates the motivator?

It’s funny – I get asked this all of the time. My job is to motivate students and yet, what is that motivates me?

Days gone by…
A few years ago (4 years ago to be precise), I ended up being divorced and depressed. It was a very dark time and one that I found hard to come to terms with.

However, whilst my life was seemingly out of control, I recognised that my fate was something that only I could control.

For the first time in my life I recognised what was truly important, it didn’t take me long to work out…

1. Seeing my kids
2. Paying for my kids
3. Anything else afterwards

Why?
It was simple really, I realised that my wife, house, material possessions, car and half an acre of land counted for very little. What I thought I ‘owned’ – I didn’t… I was merely in charge of them for NOW.

Q. If I did OWN them, then how come they got taken away from me in such a short space of time?

It dawned on me that I can’t own any of these things; the only thing I truly own is ME and my MEMORIES !! I also realised that maybe I didn’t really know who ME was.

When I’m older
Furthermore…. I also recognised that when I died – I’ll only leave behind three things of any value – That’s ‘Jack, Archie and Millie’ – my three kids.

I Needed to Change
So, I set about trying to spend more time with my kids and as a consequence I gave up my job and focused on the things that I truly valued – my kids !!

New Career – NEW Me !!
Within 2 years I was training and speaking with corporate organisation across the country. This was a great experience for me, but this was only the start of my learning curve.

I was a big kid in an adults body…
Being depressed was a horrible time for me but it taught me a lot. My vulnerabilities and my problems led me to recognise that what had happened to me was something I could have done with learning when I was much younger… ‘NOT at 37 years old !!’.
I also recognised that I wanted to reach out and touch more than just the corporate organisations of the world. I wanted to engage with young people and students – these were the people I could relate to.

Starting in Schools
I ran my first ‘Big Picture’ event to 85 student boys at Kings Grammar School in 2007 in a cold school gymnasium. It totally changed my life and also theirs…

This was the precursor to ‘The Big Picture’ that you see today.
So you can see that what truly motivates me is…

1. Personally – Seeing my children and being ME
2. Professionally – Changing the lives of students across the UK

“All I want to do is make a difference.”

The kids are all right...

This is a very interesting article for me by Gary Lewandowski and David Strohmetz that sometimes have us believing that “When the students do well – we take the credit…. And equally, when they do badly, we blame them for being lazy !!”

The article for your reference is…
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/10/28/lewandowski

I know myself this very feeling… It’s frustrating. I take the same attitude though of the stage performers like Tommy Cooper who says “If they don’t laugh – it’s ‘cos I’m not funny”. Equally I accept that students don’t engage for one reason ‘only’ – and that is my lack of ability to engage them !!

This is harsh but surely true on my part. My job is to ‘engage’ them – that is my job.

The results for ‘The Big Picture’ are often quite immediate (we get engagement throughout the event and written feedback at the end) unlike that of a teacher at school who gets the ultimate measurement when the exam grades are announced a whole 10 months later!!

I think as humans there is a natural ‘default’ to blame others and believe that we have given excellent learning with brilliant research and the best ways of engaging the class… BUT is this always true?

When I first started doing what I do today, I used to believe that what I did was perfect; but yet it’s amazing how I’ve managed to improve upon ‘my previously perceived perfection’ . This is not arrogance just a little denial on my part because I don’t want to accept responsibility when things don’t turn out as I would like.

This is a big learning for me. For me, the responsibility is in two parts

1. Me to deliver phenomenal teaching
2. Students to utilise this teaching, work hard and deliver good exam grades as a result

This statement at least ‘feels’ right on my part. All I have to do now is deliver ‘phenomenal teaching’ and hope that my students keep their part of the bargain !!