Ask Coach Blog

Welcome to the Ask Coach Blog, your leading destination for student motivation, teacher motivation, teacher appreciation, and school leadership. Motivating K-12 schools in changing, diverse, and underserved communities is what we're all about. Ask Coach Powell how to make a positive difference in your classroom and school, and your question may be featured in the Ask Coach Blog!

Oct 23, 2008, Student Motivation and Music

Enhance student motivation and academic performance with the power of music!

Oct 23, 2008, Student Motivation from Infancy

Student motivation starts in infancy. A Brigham Young University study shows that 5-month-old babies can distinguish upbeat tunes from gloomier compositions.

Oct 16, 2008, Teacher Motivation and Personal Development

Donna Marie here. Sometimes the most challenging part of teaching is just feeling empowered to do the job. There are so many things that chip away at that power: budget cuts, uninvolved parents, undisciplined students, overwhelming state requirements, personal issues.

That's why I wanted to share with you Steve Pavlina’s new book, Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth. It's a self-help book that will help anyone in any profession improve their work and their lives.

Pavlina frames the self development process with three main principles: truth, love, and power. I think for teachers, the lack of power is the big issue and can even explain increasing rates of attrition. According to Pavlina, power is

“…your ability to consciously and deliberately create the world around you. When your power is weak, you can’t effectively satisfy your needs and desires, and you become a victim of your environment. When your power is strong, you successfully cultivate a life of your own choosing, and your environment reflects it.”

Some of the teachers we work with in poor communities have an overwhelming, debilitating sense of not being able to help their students. You can't change the community, but you do have power in your classroom. Look, this is no time to be politically correct. Our schools are in a state of emergency. Students as a whole are lagging behind other nations, and students in underserved, changing, and diverse communities are doing even worse.

Pavlina suggests that you can actually strengthen your sense of personal power. You can't control everything, but you can change your perception of things. He suggests the following ways to build power:

1. Progressive training. Progressively train yourself to tackle bigger challenges. Once you succeed at one thing then raise the bar.

2. Master the First Hour. If you adopt a disciplined routine for your first waking hour, you'll probably enjoy a highly productive day. Many of you have students do morning bell work. Same thing.

3. Personal Quotas. Establish a daily minimum output goal for yourself in some areas of your life.

4. Worst First. My mother (the retired English teacher) always told me to eat my vegetables first. If you have something difficult or distasteful to do (lesson plans anyone?), get it done first. Don't procrastinate or it will hang over your head and cause even more stress.

5. Competition. Use competition to motivate you. Don't let other teachers outrace you in their success with students. Find out what they're doing, then do it better. And definitely use friendly competition to stimulate learning in the classroom.

6. Rest. During the Olympic games, I heard a couple of the athletes say that the secret of their power was that they knew how to rest and recover after intensive workouts. Take out moments of rest during the school day. Give yourself a chance to relax and recuperate.

Oct 16, 2008, Student Motivation, Reading, and Richard Wright's Black Boy

Motivating students to read became easy when a retired high school English teacher of special needs lucked onto a book that had high interest for the population.

Oct 15, 2008, Interviews with Master Motivators

Motivation seems to come easily to some people. In this section, we talk to Master Motivators who have a knack for getting students (and people in general) motivated.

Oct 13, 2008, Student Motivation, Divergent Thinking, and Music Training

Student motivation and engagement in the classroom can receive a boost from musical training. Research reveals that trained musicians use more of their brain than non-musicians.

Oct 12, 2008, Teacher Appreciation

Teacher appreciation is all about feeling loved and appreciated for the work you do. Come to this section often for motivation and inspiration. Never give up! Our children need you!

Oct 12, 2008, Teacher Appreciation from the Mouths of Babes

Teacher appreciation may be hard to come by, but our students need you. Watch this video by young student Dalton Sherman whenever you're in doubt. Never give up!

Sep 26, 2008, Bootstrap Motivation

Donna Marie here. My father, the retired high school teacher, likes to tell the story of growing up in Jacksonville, Alabama, during the Jim Crow era. There was no high school in Jacksonville, so the students had to take public transportation to nearby Anniston.

The students were African American. Not only did they have to ride at the back of the bus, they had to get off the bus to make room for white passengers when the bus got too crowded.

The absenteeism rate of my father and the other students got so high that their parents finally took matters into their own hands. They built their own high school, and my father proudly boasts that he was the first, smartest, and only male to graduate from the school.

That story puts a smile on both of our faces. I love the bootstrap mentality our folks had back then. They were truly motivated to ensure their children got a good education.

Our parents and grandparents of all races, nationalities, and religious affiliations overcame hardships to get their education. Some of them walked miles to school with holes in their too-tight shoes.

They didn't have buses or up-to-date books or athletic facilities or the Internet or professional development, and still they excelled. They were motivated by the desire to have a better life. Their parents believed that education was the path to success, and so they made their children behave in class, respect the teacher, and do their homework. Period. No debate.

We're all for equitable financing of schools, but there are schools with peeling plaster and broken seats in the auditorium that are turning out academic superstars. Teachers, in the classroom, you hold the golden key to students' success.

Yes, it would be nice to have all the amenities, but until that happens, refuse to let even one precious soul fail. Never forget that every child has the capacity to achieve greatness in the classroom, and you're the reason why.

Sep 21, 2008, School's In Session

Coach Powell uses music power for student motivation. Here are hit tunes from his popular CD School's In Session.