Reflection on Knowledge learned in Week 5: Reinforcing Effort

I suppose we all have those students in our classroom who seem to consistently give little or no effort. The fact that I struggle to reach these guys bothers me greatly. When I notice these students who seem apathetic, disengaged and producing work below average I want to know right away is it me or is this a student who has no clue that if he just tries harder he will see more positive results. One of the first things I do is check with other teachers to get feedback on how they may be doing in their other middle school classes. I have yet to find a student that does not exhibit the same behavior in most all classes. I teach desktop publishing and find it surprising that there are those that still do not put effort into their projects in my class, especially when they are able to experience state of the art workstations with industry standard software (Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign). So how do I get them to believe in themselves? After reading the chapter on Reinforcing Effort I am very encouraged by some of the strategies mentioned on how to get students to realize the importance of believing in effort. One strategy in particular is the use of the Effort Rubric. I consistently use rubrics for all assigned projects, so this one strategy caught my attention. “Research tells us that not all students realize the importance of effort. Many attribute their success or failure to external factors” (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007, pg. 156). I also was interested when I read about using the Effort Survey. I believe that if I were to have my students participate in a survey on effort then introduce the an effort rubric at the beginning of the year while they are fresh and perhaps have a more positive attitude due to a “new beginning”, then I could possibly reach these students who really don’t see the connection between effort and achievement. After all, Pitler et al. (2007) state that research indicates that students can change their beliefs and make a connection between effort and achievement (Pitler et al., 2007, pg. 156). This encourages me and gives me hope that I can and will be able to reach these students!

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.