Hiding The Bad In The Good

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How can you get a kid who would rather play Roblox than exercise to walk 5 miles with little complaining? How can you get a reluctant reader to deeply read nonfiction and enjoy it? By hiding what they don’t want to do within things they do. Just like hiding peas inside mashed potatoes!

A recent vacation to Hawaii has provided the previous two examples for our family. Hiking around the stunning landscape of Hawaii Volcano National Park and asking our children to teach us about Hawaiian geography, history, and culture worked magically. Walking through lava tubes and across a volcanic crater is an incredible experience. One almost forgets they are trekking 4.5 miles with a 700-foot elevation change when they are imagining creating a Minecraft world that resembles the Kilauea Iki Crater.

Reading aloud about what to expect during the drive to the national park, the type of volcano that makes up the Hawaiian Islands, and how the volcanoes have shaped the Big Island gave our hesitant reader a sense of control and attention. Giving that responsibility to our child who likes to learn and teach, but avoids reading, hides what they dislike in their likes. How can teachers, leaders, and coaches leverage this same philosophy to improve their school's collective experiences?

Providing autonomy is one answer. Everyone likes to have some control over what and how they work. People with autonomy are more engaged and satisfied with their efforts. Those with some choice and freedom in their process or final product will nearly always produce better outcomes than those forced to work in a specific manner.

There are various ways that teachers, leaders, and coaches can build autonomy. With adults, often all that is needed from leadership is a clear end goal, a defined timeline, and supportive resources as needed. Letting professionalism, creativity, and experience take off from that point can produce results beyond what was originally expected. Use progress checks not to micromanage, but to confirm shared understanding of goals and offer support when needed. Students often require more structure as they are still developing executive functioning, but too much can stifle their creativity and drive.

For students, one example of offering process autonomy is a choice board, where students are expected to do a certain number of activities of their choosing from an array of options. I like to refine this by organizing the options by level of difficulty, with one, two, or three points for each level. Students then need to earn a certain number of total points, allowing them to try a few challenging questions or do more of the easier ones. Here is an example of a blank template you can build:

Another example of autonomy is in the product they choose to complete a project. For students to prove mastery of a topic, they can choose to complete a speech, essay, art piece, or video. Unless the specific assignment is a speech, allowing students to produce a final product in a way that fits their strengths and passions sets them up for success. I also have teachers who use different levels of complexity on projects for different grade categories. Students can choose a relatively simple and straightforward final product that still shows understanding to earn a maximum of 80%. If students want to shoot for a 90% they need to challenge themselves a little more, and for 100% they must complete the most difficult options. Kids can then choose what they feel up to completing based on what makes the most sense for them.

For the highest level of autonomy, have the workers build the plan. What do teachers feel they need to learn the most about, and how can they create professional learning opportunities? What do they want to accomplish? What will make them proud or have the biggest impact? How can students create questions, problems, prompts, or projects for other students? How can students take what they have learned and produce something useful for the school or community? Ask these questions, and then get out of the way except to provide support as needed. Give others a chance to lead and shine, distract them from the unpleasant tasks with great options, and suddenly a task that seemed overwhelming or unpleasant can become tolerable and even rewarding.