Reaching Struggling Students

Why students struggle

Our students struggle for many reasons, but often there’s a bigger cause behind their struggles: schooling that doesn’t match their goals and interests.

I’ve worked with many students who struggled in school. Their problem is one that compounds itself: One failure leads to another failure, and another and another, and each time the student gets more discouraged until their motivation drops to almost nothing. Behind their struggles is one big problem: These children don’t know how to learn. They don’t know how to learn because no one really took the time to find out how they learn. Many students learn and retain information differently than how a lesson is taught.

If a student can be made aware that they learn differently – if they learned how they learned – their motivation and willingness to learn would increase. They’d accomplish more than they ever believed they could.

Connecting the dots to learning for struggling students

To do that, a teacher has to experiment with different strategies to find out how a struggling student learns. It’s not always easy to do given the limitations of class time and the size of the classes many of us lead, but there are ways to work with students within these limits that can make a world of difference for them.

The norm in American schools today is to deliver information to the students in one way. There’s a lecture, maybe a practice exercise or a quiz. If there’s time, a few minutes of independent study or time to start homework might be assigned. How many of your students don’t connect with the lesson?

Creating lessons that engage students is a daily challenge. Students have the information; how do they process it? What can they do with it? How do they connect the dots between receiving the information and actually learning it?

It’s my firm belief that knowing that you’re capable of learning is more important than finding what motivates you. Once you believe you’re capable of learning, you will be motivated to learn. If you don’t believe in your capabilities, if you don’t believe that you’re in control of your destiny, then why would you ever be motivated to learn, grow and succeed? How can someone set goals when they don’t believe they’ll reach them?
The reality is that most of the students you are trying to motivate don’t believe they are capable of learning. Many don’t believe an education will change their destiny.

Assess, then guide

What I did with students was to assess what kind of learners they were. Any chance I got – from talking with them, from reading their papers, from observing how they interacted with other students in the class, and from how they behaved during lectures – I mentally took notes on who they were, what they showed interest in, and what seemed to totally bore them.

Whenever I could, I guided students toward activities or assignments that played to their strengths. It wasn’t always possible, but I kept an eye out for opportunities.

Stop trying to motivate students until you understand what learning strategies work for them. Then tell them what works!

Struggling student case study

One of my students had to complete just one more assignment to pass his English class and get his high school diploma. He needed to write a term paper. And he was refusing to do it. “It’s stupid,” he told me when I sat down with him after class. “The topic is stupid.”

“What’s your favorite thing to do?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I like snowmobiles. I go riding every weekend when there’s enough snow on the ground.” He wanted to compete in snowmobiling, he told me, and didn’t see the point in having a high school diploma for that.

There was my AHA! moment – the opportunity I had been looking for.

“What if you wrote a paper on snowmobiling?” I said. You see, the topics the school offered were suggestions – the goal was to write a term paper. That bit of leeway was a big opportunity to guide a student. “You could write about the history of the sport. You’ve got a ton of knowledge about snowmobiles,” I said.

This kid brightened up. He knew everything there was to know about snowmobiles. And he went to town on that paper. I was stunned by what he came up with and the research he put into it. He went to the library and worked with the school librarian to find the sources he needed. Research was something I never expected to see him doing – but because the topic was in his interest area, he was motivated. Even more, he had the support – from me and the librarian – that he needed in order to believe he could be successful.

Look for the little ways to help struggling students

As teachers, we often don’t have many options available for the students to choose from. The decision about what to teach and how to teach it is made for us. But if we can find ways to weave students’ personal interests into our lessons – if we can find the small loopholes that allow us to empower struggling students to decide how they’ll learn – we may be able to reach children that we couldn’t otherwise reach.


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