Shadowing a Student Shows How to Make Learning More Relevant: Engaging Immigrant Students in Learning Requires Ensuring That Their Lessons at School Are Relevant to the Realities of Their Lives

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Far too many students become disinvested in school well before high school graduation. That applies to immigrant students with complicated biographies just as it applies to students facing fewer challenges. When students continuously encounter assignments they find boring or not meaningful, their attention to learning weakens. In typical situations, teachers label students unmotivated and resort to bribes and threats to get them to complete tasks. However, when students approach learning to achieve a goal that isn't connected with the learning experience--for example, points and pizza for good behavior or after-school detention and bad grades for troublemakers--a predictable by-product is that students will take the most cursory approach to accomplish the goal. A common example is cramming for a test to achieve a good grade and, a day later, forgetting all but the desperation of a grueling late-night experience. If we believe in substantive learning for all students, yet teach in ways that undermine it, we contradict our intentions. While teaching at the University of Washington-Seattle, I probed these concerns with graduate students, most of whom were aspiring school or district leaders, in a course on motivation and instructional change. I wanted educators in the course to examine the idea that across all cultural groups intrinsic motivation--that by which students learn for the deep satisfaction of learning--is the source, mediator, and outcome of student engagement. I also wanted them to see that all people are motivated, whether or not they are motivated to learn what a teacher expects. Although motivation is vulnerable to distraction, boredom, and difficulty, and sustaining student motivation can seem elusive, I wanted these experienced educators to consider how instructional plans also could be motivational plans. By motivational plans, I mean designing instruction based on four conditions that are part of a framework for culturally responsive teaching that Raymond Wlodkowski and I developed from interdisciplinary research over 20 years ago. The four conditions with related questions follow: * Establishing inclusion: How can teachers create a learning environment in which all students feel respected by and connected to one another and to the teacher? * Developing a positive attitude: How can teachers create or affirm a favorable disposition toward learning through personal and cultural relevance and student choice? * Enhancing meaning: How can teachers create engaging and challenging learning experiences that include student perspectives and values? * Engendering competence: How can teachers help students understand that they are becoming more effective in ways that have authentic value for their goals and the well-being of the broader community? To explore these four motivational questions, graduate students developed inquiry projects. Some of the projects included shadowing a student who was a recent immigrant during a school day and visiting the student's family in their home. Students worked with this overarching question: When and under what conditions is this particular student likely to be motivated and engaged in learning? I hoped students would see how shadowing could become a way to consider what needs to happen for a broad range of students to be motivated and engaged as learners, and how, eventually, the process might help other educators interrupt blame and deficit thinking directed toward students and families. They shaped their investigations so they could share results and structures with teachers in their own contexts. The scenario that follows shows how one graduate student, whom I will call Ms. Lerner, approached inquiry. Ms. Lerner was curious about a student, whose name I've also fictionalized. From her perspective, Ahmed seemed unmotivated to learn in school, yet highly motivated in other contexts. …