All of my adult life I have been obsessed with stories of passionately motivated individuals.  Some of the best stories involve a person who wanders aimlessly blowing through life with little ambition until they stumbled into the perfect nexus of interest and self realization.  I have read stories of young Olympians driven by the relentless pursuit of excellence, inventors undaunted by countless failure, and political leaders determined to create waves of change.

In fact, in my own motivational journey I wandered somewhat like the Israelites in the desert until I found my path as an educator.  I knew I loved learning, and I knew I could teach, but I was interested in so many things I had a hard time focusing in on one path.  I also had some pretty bad habits.  I was creative but disorganized, intelligent but unchallenged, and basically inconsistent at bringing it everyday.  I grew up in a family with some serious economic struggles and I felt the insecurity of my position all the time.  It was not until Mike, my future husband, came into my life with his perfectly matched sock drawer that things started to change.

Mike helped me channel my chaotic approach to all things by asking me to complete ONE degree.  By the time I have met him, I had switched from pre-law, to psychology, and was going to take off a year to write the next great American novel.  He told me greatness started with staying on one path AND putting the toilet paper on the roll a certain way.  He pushed me to go back and register for next semester, and when I showed him my registration card…he asked me to marry him.

He and I are ying and yang, a blend of creativity and dailyness.  Our marriage of almost 19 years is an epic love story of the ultimate growth mindset.  We leave each other so much space to keep becoming more.  And every time I wander into his basement workshop where every tool is lined up by size and purpose, I am inspired by his modeling.  My third grade classroom with its beautiful well stocked bookcases, meticulously kept math manipulates, and purposefully planned themed is a result of his influence in my life.

So this year, when I started to pick up my pace in my third grade science and social studies curriculum, and more and more students started to fail…I knew I needed to do something.  I was not willing to slow down.  I passionately believe in exposing kids to many different ideas in the classroom and I was not going to skip entire units just to drill and kill the vocab words which were a part of the assessments we used for our focus school data.  I wanted to spend my class time on exciting experiments, answering student created questions, and creating innovative projects…but MANY of my kids were not studying.  Despite the fact  I created quizlets, and flipped my instruction with videos,   they were not putting in enough effort to earn high marks.

I realized that some of the kids in my Title One building needed to be motivated by having a picture of what success feels like.  They were too young to be content with their own failure.  I reached back to my experiences as a college instructor and decided to implement a reward called, The Dean’s List Luncheon.  It would be a special lunch to honor the kids who had As and Bs in science and social studies tests.  I had no idea if it would work, but I kept thinking about how much I needed role modeling for my own transformation.

When I announced the luncheon, the kids were on fire.  They were so excited, they talked about it incessantly, asking when the event would occur.  After each test they would swarm me demanding to know if an 85% was good enough to earn a spot at the luncheon.  When several didn’t make it, they insisted on a retest, pleading with me to give them another chance.  Knowing this meant more time spent studying I relented and they crammed.  Each morning, I would be met in the hallway by at least one of them stating with confidence, “I’m ready, I studied for a couple of hours last night.”

The day before the formal invitations went out, the classroom was a beehive of excited energy.  I looked up from administering an oral reading assessment to discover they had created a list on the board of attendees and kids were lining up to write their name.  In their student blogs, the forum was full of banter about the luncheon, “YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I made the luncheon.  Are you going?”

Even my highest achieving students, the ones who didn’t seem to need any extra incentives were bubbling over. As we left for the day, one friend said, “There is no way I am going to be able to sleep tonight…I laid out my clothes on Monday.”

And so the big day arrived and with it my third graders entered the school, “dressed to impress”.  Decked out in polo shirts and dresses they were so proud of themselves.  You would have thought I offered them the moon tied with a silver ribbon instead of pasta and a Costco cake.  And my results were impressive, I went from 4 kids with a B or above average to 17 kids who were eligible.

Once again I have learned from my students.  It takes effort and grit to study, but kids are willing to do the work when they have a vision for themselves.  To create a culture of high academic achievement you have to model what success feels like.  And once kids feel their successful they become hungry for more.  Just as Mike has been my catalyst for change, so I am a spark for my students, igniting motivation and fanning its flame into a roaring fire of desire for more.