The Carrot and the Stick
What we do in this class is obviously more complicated than this, but if you needed to whittle it down to one thing, that thing would be how you spend the class period.
This works because the assignments and texts and feedback are all designed to reward investment. The more time you spend on our work, the better. There is no busywork here, precisely because we can change the work to be more authentic if it is busywork. We can tailor the work to be more meaningful and helpful for the individual. So the work is always worth doing.
That said, you don’t need an understanding of the material or an inherent investment in learning to understand that you have to work during class. To understand that, you just need access to a copy of the assessment profiles. And if we want to make it even simpler, and we do, you only need to look at that hyperlinked poster, which is now hanging in our classroom.
And then, if we want to simplify it even further, you only need to consider four words:
- basic requirements
- required assignments
Those phrases appear in the profile language that corresponds to a 70 and 90, respectively, in Infinite Campus.
Focus on the fundamental similarities between “requirements” and “assignments.” Assignments usually are more formal, and are usually posted to Google Classroom; they include, however, any assigned task, such as the one indicated by this instructional post. It’s not semantic.You must meet the basic requirement of the course, and if you do not meet it, you must accept the repercussions.
The most basic requirement is that you work from the time the bell rings until the time it rings again. That’s your persistent, unchanging assignment. If you do that, you are overwhelmingly likely to keep up with formal assignments and writing responses and test prep and so on, simply because you’re going to have to find things to occupy your time. You’re also overwhelmingly likely to get the feedback you need for an upper-tier profile, simply because you’re going to need to ask for direction and help as you work to fill the class time.
That’s the built-in circuit: To meet that basic requirement, you’ve got to fill the time, and filling the time means being productive.
In other words, if you commit yourself to being productive for 40+ minutes a day, you’ll find that your productivity can’t help but move you along in the right ways. You’ll have to read and annotate and re-read the interstitial instruction, if you hope to fill that time. You’ll need to flag down the teacher for help and guidance, if you hope to fill that time. You’ll have to collaborate with your peers, write reflections, or read a book.
Because if you don’t find something to fill that time, you are no longer meeting the most basic requirement of the course. You are no longer completing all required assignments. You can, therefore, no longer say that you fit the profile of a 7 or higher, which means you are at best looking at an 85 for the assessment period. You must also entertain the serious possibility that you fit the profile of a 4, which means you might see a 70 for the assessment period — and it probably is even lower than that.
That’s due to the nature of feedback in a makerspace like ours. The first time you stop working during the class period, it might be an honest mistake, even with the clear language of the profiles and the extraordinary amount of front-loaded instruction in the course. The second time you stop working during the class period, it might be another honest mistake — but it’s a mistake that indicates a lack of self-awareness, a lack of internalization, and a lack of assiduousness. It suggests a lack of amenability, too.
The third time you stop working during the class period? That’s a deliberate failure to follow instructions. It’s a conscious decision to ignore posts like this, face-to-face feedback, redirection during the period, speeches at the start of class, etc. You can’t not know that the single most basic requirement of the course is to work diligently and consistently during the class period.
And that drops a profile into the lowest tiers, where it is certainly possible to see scores of 60 or 50 every three weeks.
Just the Carrot
This system has been built to be modular and responsive, which is a way of saying that it adapts to your needs and has a lot of combinable elements. If you do nothing but invest in the class time we have, you’re going to unlock something you want to do, either for the final grade or because you see the value in it. Your motivations are far less important, especially early on.
I invite you to think about what you could do with what we have in Room 210. Ask questions here about how to fill the time. Ask about how to individualize the work. Ask about how to navigate exhaustion and distraction and that panicky feeling when you have a History outline due next period. I’ll help you to do this.
This post makes it abundantly clear that the first step to meeting any requirements for the course is working diligently for the whole class period every day. Today, I have to admit, I got a little bit distracted and strayed off course (wasting time on an off-topic discussion). I wrote a whole reflection on Google Drive, but essentially I realized that by ninth period, I simply did not have the mental energy to push myself away from avoiding the work and indulging in another activity. So my question to you all is: how do you rejuvenate and decompress during the school day enough so that you can devote yourself fully to an important task?
I have a second question too. We’ve all read a lot about collaboration being the best way for us to learn, but also about how our learning should be personalized and meaningful to us. So what is the best way for us to learn in a group but simultaneously individualize our learning? I think the answer lies somewhere in using the group as a resource, a feedback mechanism of sorts, to guide and fuel our individual learning. But I would love to hear more thoughts on how we can take advantage of the collaborative aspect of the makerspace to further learning that is significant to us specifically.
I completely agree with jane a big part of getting throw this course and meeting requirement is being focused. I do notice that when I get off task and to stray from my work. I find myself being very lost, confused, and slowly falling behind. so here is my question. with this class being so open on us to just do the work that is assigned online and have the option to work in groups all the time what are was to make yourself stay focused, be on top of or work , or not stray into are own thoughts and conversations.
I think a lot of the time, we realize that the conversation is going downhill, and this means that we can combat it before we lose too much time. Here are three tricks that work well for me: 1) removing myself from the group. Sometimes I go off to another table to refocus myself and make sure I am using my time effectively. However, the obvious drawback to this approach is that I am not helping the group as a whole refocus. So here is strategy #2: refocus with a question. This one works well for me when there is a clear assignment to be working on. You pose a question to the group about something that is relevant to whatever the classwork is: what did you think about whatever post? how are your Pareto Projects coming along? did you have the chance to look at this resource?, etc… This is effective because it forces a response from every member of the group, kind of jump-starting the conversation and pushing it back on track. Here comes the last of my typical strategies: 3) use lists to organize and prioritize. You can make a to-do list on paper or online (checkli.com works for me). First, this makes all of the things you know you have to get done seem less overwhelming since there is an order to it all. And more importantly, it helps you make sure you are taking concrete steps to meet a goal. For the days when you really do not feel like doing anything, make the tasks simple and short so you will get started on them right away and not get intimidated into apathy about meeting the requirements of an assignment. Okay, so that’s all from me- I really hope this helps!
Jane, I really never thought of it that way until reading your post. Whenever I would get off task I thought the right thing to do was to remove myself from the group and continue to work elsewhere in the room. But, as you mentioned this may be benefiting you but it leaves your group off task which hurts you and them in the end. I think the tricks you have come up with I am going to try because I want to be able to help them and myself get back on task so that we can utilize our time in English. Thank you for sharing this idea!
Jane, this was interesting to me because it showed your awareness. The fact that you were able to see that you were straying from the work, that’s ok. As mentioned in the article, that first time might be an honest mistake. You were collaborating with a classmate and you began talking about something a bit less important. The idea of not being able to see this led me to do some research. The Dunning-Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude.” (Wikipedia) Basically, its being too stupid to realize that you’re stupid. You are definitely not suffering from this. Haha, keep up the good work…
I rejuvenate during the day in my mindfulness through movement class, study hall, and as I listen to music. This class unfortunately comes before all of those things for me so, I need to find another strategy to stay focused. I come from math before this class which tends to make my brain hurt, making getting of task difficult to avoid at times. I feel as though this post has encouraged me to try to stay on task even harder than I have been.
How candid and straight to the point this post is is very effective. I think that any students that didn’t fully understand the basic requirements of this course and the importance to stay productive now have a full understanding that that is part of the basics for this class. If we aren’t productive and doing what we should be doing, we will not get the grades that we all hope to achieve and there is no way around that. There are no short- cuts.
I believe this post is very straight forward and helpful to students who still are struggling with their GAP scores. Being in the upper tier is something that is very important to me and many more of my peers. This posts shows that if you want to stay in that upper tier, a big part of this class is staying on task and being productive for 40 minutes everyday. I also think students would agree that they would rather read posts during class than having to come home and do work on their own time. I also feel as if using class time to do my work is more helpful because i’m able to utilize my tools around me such as the keurig, the posters, my peers, Mr. Eure, etc. Meeting the basic requirements for this class is essential and that can be as simple as making sure you’re on task during the allotted time the school offers you.
A great thing about this class is there is always something to be working on, be it your Pareto Project or reading and responding to the latest post on Sisyphean High. This post really drives home that there are no short cuts to succeeding in this class, and that the only way to get the grades you want in this class are to work hard enough to achieve that grade. Every student in this class, including myself, has wasted at least some time on a topic irrelevant to the class. I like how this post admitted that getting off topic could be a mistake, but we are in control of some of the mistakes we make, and we have to take responsibility of every mistake we make, because if we keep letting mistakes happen, our grades will drop, and it will snowball into making even more mistakes.
I think you’re right about how there is always something to do in this class, Ryan. I got this impression from the What Do I Do Next? post a little while ago and it’s certainly worth repeating. It made me realize that if I think I am completely done, I am doing something wrong- not being willing to re-engage with feedback or get more comments from my peers or not asking deep enough questions. Whatever the case may be, I’m glad you pointed out that there is always another layer to everything, and with it- something else to do.
To understand this post personally I think you had to really internalize the information in the “What do I do Next” post because of the close relationship between the two. When you get off task in class which we are all guilty of you have to ask yourself what am I suppose to be doing next? As many of you know that is a question that is always answered in our English class. Whether it be going back to posts and reading hyperlinks or checking the calendar to see what we will be diving into next there is always something to do. Also, I think it is important to notice that the time that you spend in our class will not always be the same as others. Though often times we are all working on the same assignment, it’s okay if one group is disscussing the content of the post while another sits silently working on their computers. I have learned that as long as your actions are productive and somehow contributing to our learning environment then you are on task.
This is a really good point, being on task and productive may look different for each table. Even if we have a formal assignment, is it okay if we want to work on Pareto Project during the class period and then finish the formal assignment at home? Or should we use class time to focus on formal assignments and work on our projects in our free time at home?
When I was reading the article, I read how we should commit ourselves to being productive everyday for at least 40 minutes straight. (I am assuming Mr. Eure meant outside of class) However, what happens on some days when you simply do not have time to allot to that? I remember reading an article named something like Head Training in which you employed the use of chambers, and allot I think 40 straight minutes a day to activities between other activities. I know for myself, with my extra curricular activities, activities outside of school, and homework that I struggle with getting everything done so I can’t imagine how it must be for anyone doing a sport. For me, I often find myself with maybe 20 minutes going from one thing to the next.
The 40 minutes he is referring to is the time you have in class. The 42 minute period.
I agree, the 40 minute increment that Mr. Eure was talking about was class time. It is the 36th physical chamber that has been mentioned in previous posts. It is so special because after spending the majority of your time doing work interstitionally, you only have 40 minutes of physical time in the class. This time should be used to teach and learn and discuss with your classmates in order to benefit everyone. It can also be used to form a feedback loop with the teacher which will ultimately impact your grade abatement score, which most students find to be too important.
Something I found really interesting in one of the readings (I believe the annotated version of “What Do I Do Next?”) was that it said the goal is growth. I usually find it a lot easier to keep at a task when there is a I am working toward. Especially with this sort of never-ending, Sisyphean “goal,” there is a motivation to learn more and more.
I agree with you, Victor. When I have a clear goal to work towards, I am always more motivated to get it done. I tend to use a lot of checklists and mechanisms like that (maybe the Pomodoro technique as we move forward) and I find that breaking down a task makes it much less intimidating and overwhelming and drastically more doable.
I also agree with this, when I have a project or something big to work towards I am usually more motivated to finish it. I as well will make lists on my phone or set reminders for myself for when I need to get certain parts done by a deadline.
Again, I completely agree because not only in this class, but also in life your goal should be to grow. No matter how smart, clever, or talented we think we are, there is always going to be more room to grow. As cliche as it is, we can learn something new every day. By taking the gap score of 10 out of grade abatement, Mr. Eure showed us how it is almost impossible to achieve that score because no one is perfect, and that is okay. We just need to strive to become as perfect as we personally can, which may look different for every single person.
This post tells us how no matter what day it is, there is always something to do in this class. We can always be revising to making our work better as long as helping our peers to do the same. We are also given many projects at the same time and we can take our time to complete them in which ever order we want. We need to be looking at the profiles and learning the terms of them before we complete and hand in our work.
I realized also with this post that everything we are meant to read, all the work we are meant to do is to help us in some way. To help us become stronger readers and writers. As it says in the article, there is no busy work in this class. I do realize I stray from working during the period a few times, but these posts we read really make a difference in performance and help you understand what is going to happen for the rest of this year in this class.