It’s agonizing to watch. Sometimes it occurs as a slow leak, seeping from a pinhole in the bottle. Other times it’s a torrent flowing freely from a gaping hole. Sometimes it’s somewhere in between.

However it happens, it’s tragic. The death of motivation should be mourned openly. And it should be acknowledged it’s happening far too often in the classroom

Let’s explore the idea through an experiment. If you’ve not read Dan Ariely’s The Upside of Irrationality, you should remedy that. In the book, he explains an experiment he conducted with Harvard undergraduates. Here’s the setup.

Subjects were paid on a declining wage scale for each 40 piece, Bionicle Lego set they assembled. The first set assembled earned the participant $2.00. The second set earned $1.89. And each subsequent set earned $0.11 less than the one before. Once the declining wage reached $0.02, it remained static for every set assembled thereafter.

The first group was given a new box of the Bionicles, and after completion, the assembled Bionicle would be set on the desk in front of the subject, and a new box would be received. After each set was completed, the subject was told how much money he had earned to that point, and the assembled Bionicle would be added to those previously assembled on the desk in front of the subject. The subject continued building sets until he made the decision to stop.

The second group was given a box of Bioncles to complete, and after completion, a new box of Bioncles was handed over. While the subject began work on the second Bionicle, the experimenter took the first one and disassembled it in front of the subject, placing the pieces back into the first box. Once the subject completed the second, the experimenter immediately gave the subject the box of pieces that had previously been assembled. Again, after each set was completed, the subject was told how much money he had earned to that point. The subject continued on, building the same two sets repeatedly. The subject continued building sets until he made the decision to stop.

The experiment was set up to see what impact the perceived meaning of a task had on the output of a subject. The results are fascinating.

The first group completed an average of 10.6 Bionicles and received an average of $14.40 for the experiment. The second group built an average of 7.2 Bionicles, and received an average of $11.52. For more details about this experiment and the findings, I’d recommend you read Ariely’s piece from the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning: The case of Legos.”

Think about being in that second group for a moment. About the satisfaction of completing a Bionicle, handing your work over to the experimenter, and watching what you’ve just done deconstructed before your eyes. Watching the deconstruction while you are set to work on the next set. Then coming to the realization that what you are doing at that very moment is only minutes away from receiving the same tear down as the first set you worked to create. Then realizing no matter how many sets you complete, there won’t be any final product to demonstrate the effort and work you are expending. That what you are doing, in essence, is meaningless.

Now think about our students.

When I was in high school, I had a math class I abhorred. Because every night I would spend hours on homework. Always the evens, because the answers to the odds were in the back of the book. When I got to class the next day, the teacher would walk around and check to see if we had finished our work. We’d get credit if we did. We’d get zeros if we didn’t. On random days, we would score the work and receive a grade equivalent to how many answer we got correct. But our work always stayed in our notebooks. Nobody ever saw it. Except the two second fly by from the teacher.

Every night I was creating a Bionicle set, and each following day, my teacher was disassembling it.

I wonder how often I did that to my students when I was a teacher. How often I assigned work that proved to be meaningless. Work that killed the motivation of my students.

At the end of his article, Ariely states, “Thus, monitoring that is accompanied by increased meaning (recognition, education, acknowledgment) might not only eliminate the negative side effects of control, but also increase workers’ effort and motivation.”

I think the same can be said for our students. Give them assignments that are meaningful, and watch the effect. Don’t ask them to paint a house with water. Give them the opportunity to create something that can produce a recognizable result for their efforts. Something they can be proud of. Something they can care about. Something you can care about.

And watch how many Bioncles they are willing to make for the world.

Kids and teachers are interacting. Everybody panic.

Unfortunately, too many are. Somehow, we’ve forgotten this is a cornerstone of being an educator. That a teacher’s role does not stop at the final bell. That a teacher is also a mentor, and sometimes that overflows into the hours beyond the given school day. And it’s been happening for decades.

Yet, somehow social media and electronic communications seem to suddenly change the landscape. Districts are scrambling to respond to what they fear is an inappropriate medium for teachers and students to use to interact. I’m not sure I get that.

Take, for example, the district I used to work for. They recently passed their social media and electronic communications policy, and the local paper reported it as, “Dist. 220 bans social media contact between teachers, students.” The problem is, take a look at their actual policy (5:135). It doesn’t. And it shouldn’t.

The logic cited behind banning such mediums is most often due to the danger and risk of inappropriate interactions between teachers and students. If that’s the case, then there’s a whole lot more banning that we need to do. Because what about the times when students stay after school to get help from a teacher? Or what about the times when students call a teacher’s classroom phone for help? Or what if a teacher tutors a student? Or what if a teacher bumps into a student at the local mall?

Each of the cases above have, at some point in time, resulted in inappropriate interactions between teachers and students. Yet, we’re reasonable enough to put policy in place that addresses the behavior but doesn’t ban all interaction. Because teachers and students need to interact. They must. And most teachers and administrators have the common sense to know how to put healthy boundaries and guidelines on such interactions. Guidelines that don’t require the entire ceasing of interaction.

I am aware that things are changing quickly with social media, and many districts feel the need to keep up with those changes. But before you put in a policy that might preclude your teachers from helping students by interacting with them in a medium that the students might prefer, consider that you might already have the policy you need in place. Take a good look at your policy, and I’m fairly certain you will find guidelines and expectations for teachers to interact with students in a professional, appropriate manner.

If you don’t, you have much larger potential issues than social media to worry about.

If you do, let those policies guide your teacher/student interactions, and let teachers keep doing what they do. Helping students when and where they need it.

Cross Posted on T&L Advisor Blog.