for Doing Schoolwork
When students find a task uninteresting (which, let’s face it, happens fairly often), we sometimes tell them why it’s important. If you do your history homework, then you’ll get a good grade and the knowledge you need for the next unit. If you avoid your work, then you’ll get a bad grade and unhappy parents. If you never do your history homework, then you’ll lack the skills to get into a good college. We frame schoolwork as being a condition for something—an if that has a then.
But doing schoolwork isn’t necessarily a condition for anything good to happen, just as avoiding work doesn’t necessarily lead to anything bad. Some students do the minimum and still get excellent grades, charm their teachers (or at least escape notice), and go on to have brilliant careers. Other students complete every assignment to the best of their ability and still see few successes. When we frame an action—such as doing history homework—as a condition for achieving a specific goal, we feel satisfaction only upon achieving the goal, not from doing the action itself (Villatte et al., 2015). If Juan knows his history teacher will give a quiz tomorrow, he might do his reading tonight in order to get the grade he wants. Being satisfied with his grade doesn’t mean he finds the act of reading history satisfying, and he might not do his reading again until there’s another quiz.
However, if we frame actions not as conditions for achieving a particular outcome but as components of meaningful lives, we can find satisfaction in the actions themselves and feel motivated to keep doing them (Villatte et al., 2015). For Juan, a meaningful life includes connecting with people, understanding their lives, and helping when he can. If he sees how reading about history can increase his understanding of and ability to help others, he might do more of his homework!
Rather than trying to motivate our students by telling them what might happen if they do or don’t complete their assignments, we can help each of them clarify what a meaningful life is and ask, “How does doing this assignment contribute to that kind of life?” This chapter’s activities help students think about how their assignments and interactions at school contribute to the lives they want for themselves.
Grading Your Classes
After defining criteria for what makes school personally meaningful, students grade each of their courses based on these criteria and write about how they can increase their sense of meaning in class. Try this activity near the end of a marking period, when students are thinking about the grades they’re getting.
Materials for Each Student
For this activity, each student will need a pen, notebook paper, and the “What Makes a Class Meaningful?” handout (figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1: “What Makes a Class Meaningful?” handout
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Sample Script
The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.
Let’s think about how schoolwork can be meaningful. Just to get started, we’ll use a little food metaphor. In a few minutes, you’ll see how it relates to making schoolwork meaningful. (Draws a matrix on the board. Labels the columns Yummy and Yucky, labels the rows Healthy and Unhealthy, and asks the students to do the same. See figure 2.2.)
Figure 2.2: Yummy versus healthy and fun versus meaningful.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Yummy and healthy mean different things. For me, Greek salad is yummy and healthy, kale smoothies are yucky and healthy, chocolate mousse is yummy and unhealthy, and cheese puffs are yucky and unhealthy. (Fills in the boxes accordingly.) See if you can fill in your own charts with foods you like and dislike. Our tastes are going to be different. Anyone want to share what they wrote? (Pauses.)
Now that we’ve distinguished between yummy and healthy, we’re going to distinguish between fun and meaningful. (Makes a new matrix. Labels the columns Fun and Painful and labels the rows Meaningful and Pointless.) Draw yourself another matrix like mine.
An activity can be fun and meaningful, painful and meaningful, fun and pointless, or painful and pointless. You’re going to fill in your four boxes with activities, but first, just notice that something can be painful in all kinds of ways. It might be physically painful, but it could also be emotionally painful, like if it’s boring or frustrating or scary or stressful or exhausting or embarrassing. With that in mind, fill in your boxes.
What do you notice this time? Can anyone think of a meaningful pursuit that’s always fun or always painful? Is it easier to classify activities or foods? For me, even though I put swimming with my family as an activity I find fun and meaningful, there are days when going in the water is painful!
Now that we see that fun isn’t the same as meaningful, let’s talk about what makes a class fun. (Calls on students to share and records their responses, such as learning about an interesting topic, playing games, having a funny teacher, being with friends, bringing food, or getting no homework.)
If this is what makes a class fun, what makes a class meaningful? (Calls on students to share and writes their responses on the board.)
It might be hard to express what it is about a class that makes it meaningful, so here’s a list of things students sometimes say. (Distributes the “What Makes a Class Meaningful?” handout [figure 2.1, page 32].) See if you can choose three factors that are most important for a class to be meaningful to you. If the wording doesn’t quite work for you, feel free to change the wording or write your own factors. (Pauses for students to write.)
Now that you’ve come up with your three factors, see if you can recall a time when you had a classroom experience that was meaningful in one or more of the ways you identified. Maybe it was a particular lesson or project, or maybe a unit, or maybe it was the course as a whole. What happened during that experience? What was it like for you? (Students talk or write about their meaningful classroom experiences.)
How did it feel to talk about learning experiences you found meaningful? (Students might share feelings of fondness; they might also share feelings of loss or frustration that they no longer have experiences like these.)
Now let’s move from the past to the present. Please make a list of all the classes you’re currently taking. Beside each one, write what grade you’d give that class based on how meaningful it is, according to the criteria you’ve chosen. If, for example, you said a class is meaningful when it gives you opportunities to learn about topics that matter in the world, develop empathy, and show leadership, you’d give each one a grade based on how well it gives you those opportunities. (Pauses for students to write.)
How was that? What did you notice?
Now pick one or two classes that got disappointing grades. Not necessarily the lowest grades, but ones that disappoint you. Maybe you like the subject or the teacher, but you don’t find the class meaningful in the ways
