Note: Within education, the word expect has been tremendously watered-down. So what’s the solution? Well, providing the students are able to do the work-which, except in the rare circumstance of total misplacement, should be every student in your class-the best thing you can do for them is expect hard work. The same strategies will be trotted out again this year. Yet, this failed approach, that merely acts as cover for students as well as those whose job it is to educate them, is promoted and recommended time and again by educational leaders and school districts across the country. Meanwhile, these same students who are assumed to be too attentive-averse or ill-equipped to succeed rush home at the end of another wasted day and play the same video game for three hours without a break.

Many have teams of professionals meeting about them, designing intervention plans for them, and assigning labels to them they don’t understand. So they sit there, subjected to the same doomed and disheartening strategies year after year. You hide from them the realities of life and at the same time crush the development of a true work ethic-which is the only way to empower future success, no matter their circumstances. You enable their behavior and make them weaker and less motivated. You see, by spending extra time with reluctant students, by coddling, appeasing, and buying into any of an unlimited number of justifications for their inaction, you create even more resistance. You may prod them through an extra sentence or paragraph or persuade them to give half an effort.īut in doing so, you make a deal with the devil and do them more harm than good. You can work with them one on one and whisper assurances or gently convey the threat of consequences. You can lighten their load, bribe them with incentives, or offer choices, accommodations, and a buddy to sit with.

You can gently ask if there is anything bothering them or keeping them from trying.

Why dont i want to do my homework