Calling On Their Pride

Mary K. Culver

Students in the Gila River Indian Community rejected learning—until a teacher found the key to motivate them.

The day begins with the sun's first pale light streaking across the horizon behind South Mountain. I have crossed the invisible boundary that delineates the lush farmlands of Laveen and the desert of the Reservation. The contrast between the green fields and the sparse, dry brush foretells the truth of this tale: Things are different out here.

I wrote those lines in my journal early in my first year teaching in the Gila River Indian Community. At the time, I was trying to determine why all my formerly successful teaching methods and strategies were failing in my new teaching position. With a background rich in experience with at-risk youth, I had felt prepared to tackle the challenge of teaching world history, United States history, and Arizona history to three classes of 7th–12th grade students at the community's Estrella Mountain School.

The principal had warned me during my interview, "These kids are tough." But could they be tougher than junior high gangster wannabe's? Tougher than at-risk high school students in inner-city Phoenix? More challenging than high school dropouts in the Job Training Partnership Act program? I knew what tough was; I could deal with these kids.

I planned to teach my students at Estrella Mountain using the same motivational techniques that had worked well for me in the past: incorporating multiple learning styles; designing several different activities for each lesson; introducing pictures and artifacts to pique curiosity, stimulate reflection, and encourage sharing; and using a mixture of cooperative learning and direct instruction. History isn't everyone's favorite subject, so I would incorporate movement, games, and hands-on learning into my units.

My enthusiasm for history was lost on my new students, and my attempts to build personal relationships with them didn't work either. During my first semester at Estrella Mountain, I lost track of the number of times I was told, "You're white." My students made it clear that they felt justified in refusing to learn because I was white. They seemed to relish the fact that I did not understand how to motivate them. Don't you want to qualify for a good job, I'd ask. "The Tribe will take care of us." Wouldn't you like a nice house? "I'm inheriting my grandmother's house." You'll need a good car to drive into town. "She's leaving me her truck, too." Gas? "Didn't we say the Tribe will take care of us?"

After just two terms, I had almost given up hope. It seemed that theory had betrayed me: Not all students could learn. Six teachers had cycled through my classroom the year before. One had had the classroom globe bounced off his head.

What Will Work Here?

I began to see that the motivation and instructional methods that had worked in other situations, with other students, were not going to work here. In my moment of despair, I reached for research. I set out to fully understand the system of which I was now a part—to readjust my mental model of how students learn and how a classroom is run.

I interviewed the school principal, respected community members, tribal government personnel, PTO members, students, and anyone else who had a perspective on Gila River Indian Community. A picture emerged of a community so broken by poverty that its social fabric was coming apart. Thoughts of a productive future appeared dead in my students. The new casinos pumped enough money into the community to provide a handsome dole. Many of my students were complacent in the knowledge that they wouldn't starve and could live in tribal housing. Yet they still had pride—which they expressed by rebelling against the "white man's" education.

Targeting that pride as the lever to push with all my might, I collected research on self-esteem, responsibility, and locus of control. I spent the winter recess immersed in texts and online articles, seeking a solution to my students' motivational needs.

Motivation Based on Pride

During two weeks of intensive work knitting together what I had learned from a semester of working with my students and researching their community, I developed a new plan that would give students more individual control over their learning. I drew up a legalistic learning contract for students to sign that stated the grade they would receive, the work they would be required to submit, and the specific dates when they would submit it. I created assignments with varying levels of difficulty to stimulate learning. I prepared minilectures to deliver on specified days and times to give students information they could not obtain in written format. I wrote multiple forms of tests and quizzes to enable students to retake assessments as many times as needed to achieve the mastery level that their contract required. I designed multiple projects to enable students to demonstrate understanding and application of targeted knowledge.

Each contract was supplemented with an assignment sheet that outlined performance units and unit due dates. Lists of learning activities, projects, and assessments were color-coded to match each grade contract. Every item had a space to write the date of completion, points possible, and points earned. Students would be required to calculate each percentage and to keep a running account of their grade.

At the end of winter break, I returned to class, renewed and eager for another opportunity to inspire learning. On the first day of the term, I presented the new system to each class. We reviewed the learning contracts, and I explained that parents also had to sign the contracts and must attend a parent-teacher meeting if their child chose to contract for a D grade. (No contracts for Fs were permitted.) Students would be seated with classmates who contracted for the same grade. I made home visits to the handful of students who had not returned a signed contract by the third day.

Students now had the power to determine the amount they wished to learn. At first, my students were perplexed and frustrated that their teacher was no longer chasing them around with spoonfuls of knowledge, begging them to take a little bite. Although I still provided the information and activities necessary to learn, students themselves had responsibility for meeting their contractual learning obligation. Because they could obtain certain information only through minilectures, short presentations, or video clips, students had to be flexible in their pacing to accommodate these activities without causing disruptions.

I had never worked as hard as I did after I stopped doing all the work in my classroom. I measured student cognitive and affective progress on an ongoing basis, serving as a facilitator and coach. The new student-directed system liberated me to focus my energies on developing my students' affective domain. I met one-on-one with each student during every class, listening to them explain what tasks they had attempted, completed, or shunned. As students opted to expand their goals and felt empowered to complete more learning activities than their original contracts had stipulated, I acted as a cheerleader and provided support. Gradually, my role morphed from that of an unaccepted outsider to that of a mentor; "You're not bad, for a white person" led to "Maybe race doesn't matter."

The students and I developed a mutual, stubborn resolve, and it became apparent that this treaty would not be broken by either side. Students drove the pace of the class, calling for assistance and assessment. They discovered the intrinsic reward of mastering content and being among the first in the class ready for assessment. Peer pressure and attitudes about learning shifted, and students began to approach me to renegotiate their contracts for higher grades. Students no longer complained about "useless information"; their focus changed from defying the teacher's efforts to improving their own personal records. Grouping together students who contracted for the same grade—a seating arrangement originally designed to capitalize on students' competitive pride—became moot. The entire room became the A–B seating area.

The efforts of students changed the culture and climate of their learning environment. I was honored to be a part of the stimulus that sparked curiosity, responsibility, new learning, and a new point of view regarding life. The thrill of facilitating learning and attitudinal change more than repaid my work.

Although I moved out of the classroom and into a district-level administrative position the following year, I remained in contact with many of my Estrella Mountain students. I have had the pleasure of playing with their babies as I listen to their success stories from college, and I hope that I made a difference in their lives.

Finding a Way

The motivation approach described here is not a one-size-fits-all plan. My solution to the problem of motivating students in this American Indian community called for intensive targeting of the indomitable pride inherent in my students and their culture: pride of self-determination, pride of control, pride of outperforming peers in fair competition, pride of honoring a "legal" agreement.

As experienced teachers know, every class and school has a distinct personality of its own; no two teaching situations are exactly alike. We can achieve results, however, if we retain our faith in the idea that all children can learn and find solutions to fit each situation.

Mary K. Culver is assistant clinical professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz.