Ask a trainer: “How do I motivate my struggling students?”

WhyTry Trainer Mark Fuller answers:

Some students are against a wall; so close to it they can’t see above it, can’t see around it, and are at a “Why even try?” point in life. These students remind me of myself. I had a severely dysfunctional mother who was a schizophrenic and an alcoholic; who served me moldy food and told me every day that she was going to kill herself. To say the least, I didn’t have my “stuff” at school, and it was a big “why try?” for me. So how does a person go from that point of feeling like the whole world is against them to seeing that they can become something? These are the strategies I used, and if teachers can guide their unmotivated students through these, they’ll be helping students step away from their “wall” and realize, “I can do this.”

1. Find a passion

Finding a passion is one of the biggest things for me. In the midst of being involved with drugs in the 8^th grade and acting out in destructive ways, I believe my passion helped me climb out. My passion, I discovered, was wrestling. And somewhere along the way I learned, as with any passion, that it’s always good to have a big goal, but that the key is the daily goal.

Many kids wake up in the morning and don’t feel like doing whatever it is they have to do to meet their big goal. They say to themselves, “I don’t think I can make that team. I don’t think I can reach my goal,” and with that in the forefront of their mind, they stay in bed.

I don’t think people win Olympic medals, that teams win championships, that individuals get scholarships or become doctors or attorneys the day their receive their diploma, their medal, or their trophy. It all happens years before, when they wake up every morning with a broken-down version of their big goal in mind and say, “What am I specifically going to do today?”

We need to help our students cut their giant dreams in half, then in half again. They need to take their four-year or three-year or two-year goal and break it into an annual goal, a semi-annual goal, a quarterly goal, and on down into a monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly goal. Go even further and break the hours into minutes. It’s the next few minutes that lead to graduation; to making a team; to winning a medal.

2. Change behavior NOW

So many people talk about hard work, toughness, and courage, and that’s all good stuff. But what does hard work look like? What does courage look like? What does determination look like? My argument is that it looks like specific behaviors we’re going to start, and specific behaviors we’re going to stop on a daily basis. Help students determine what it is that they’re willing to stop doing and what they’re willing to start doing in order to get a good grade in a class, make a team, graduate from high school, or make it to the 4^th grade. This leads an individual to setting small goals that they can achieve, and success breeds success.

So when we look at students who are struggling, my question to them is, “What are you willing to stop? What are you willing to start doing in the next 15 minutes? We’re not focusing on next week just yet. Let’s just talk about the next 15 minutes.” This approach allows the human brain to say, “I can do that.” It breaks a giant, unachievable hurdle into a small “I can do this” task. And that kind of self-talk is critical for struggling students.

3. Never give up!

I love the quote from Winston Churchill: “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give up!”

So many times youth feel like the world is against them. Their grades are failing, they’re behind in their classes, but once again, if they can break things down into small steps, they can climb their way out.

I learned this principle firsthand when I was competing for my 7th national title. I was scored on in the last four seconds, and I could have easily said, “This is for the national title, and there’s no way I can score on this guy. He’s just going to run from me.” At that point it was a big elephant. I reminded myself to make a plan and break it down into something small that I could do. During a break, my opponent raised his hands in victory, but I had a plan. I executed my plan, scored a point, and 15 seconds into “sudden death” overtime, I scored a five-point throw and won the match.

As teachers, we only have so much time with each youth. But if you teach students these strategies and show them the steps in WhyTry’s “Jumping Hurdles” analogy, you can help a student discover options.

We only lose if we give up. And a simple statement can keep us going: “I can do this.”

Mark Fuller is a WhyTry trainer, keynote speaker, and former Olympian and national champion in wrestling. To learn more about motivating your group with WhyTry, contact us at 866.949.8791.

WhyTry announces online curriculum launch

After months of building, planning, and re-building, WhyTry is excited to announce an online product subscription! Not only is this move helping us go “green,” it will benefit WhyTry facilitators worldwide by putting all of WhyTry’s favorite products in one place. Below are the “top ten” highlights of what you get when you switch over to the WhyTry virtual community:

1. The WhyTry teacher’s manuals: Each subscription includes both the elementary and secondary teacher’s manuals, divided into colorful, comprehensive, and improved versions of the printed curriculum. Each chapter also provides you with a “flexible lesson plan” sheet to fill out and create a lesson that meets your group’s needs and time restrictions.

2. Visual metaphors: You’ll get beautifully colored, printable versions of the ten WhyTry visual analogies. We’ve tried to improve the art as well as the questions included on these posters.

3. PowerPoint: When you sign up for a year’s subscription, we’ll send you our full PowerPoint DVD, but a condensed version of this DVD is a click away on the WhyTry Online site.

4. Music: At no additional charge, we’ll provide you with all of the WhyTry elementary, secondary, and hip-hop tunes, easily downloadable in iTunes. Printable lyrics and processing questions are also provided.

5. Student journals: You can print out elementary and secondary journal pages for each of your students, and find facilitator journal prompts to make the most out of journal time.

WhyTry Journal Activity

6. Learning Activities: WhyTry has 150 learning activities to engage students and help them effectively process the WhyTry principles. Each activity has a recommendation for spatial requirements, age, group size, and time.

7. Tutorials and other video: Training videos for each of the metaphors will help you improve your teaching and better understand the activities. The site also gives you recommended links for entertaining videos that help complement your lesson.

8. Recommended reading: For each lesson, we provide you with a book list and description of how each book can enhance the learning experience for your students. Simply click on the book title to order the book from Amazon.

9. Virtual community: Your WhyTry online subscription includes free entry into the WhyTry social media site, where you can collaborate with other professionals and get new implementation ideas.

10. Instant product updates: Because WhyTry Online is, indeed, online, you’ll be the first to know when there are updates and improvements to the program. You’ll instantly get to utilize these improvements…at no additional cost.

Click here to be directed to the online site. If you have additional questions, feel free to contact us at 866.949.8791.

A life-changing final project

Audrey Cordova looked around at her 8^th grade WhyTry class, notebook and pen at the ready. For the first time in her teaching career, she was relinquishing control of her classroom and letting the students take the reins completely. So far, it wasn’t going well.

The students’ assignment was to design a mural representing the principles of WhyTry as their final project. Some students rigorously huddled at the whiteboard, making lists and writing plans, while others arm wrestled, sat quietly at their desks, stood on tables, or passed around mints.

Defense mechanisms were being used as students realized their ideas weren’t being acknowledged. If they were excluded, they found other activities to distract them and show that they didn’t care. “The class has now split into three groups,” wrote Audrey in her notebook. “One group is having off-topic conversation, and one group is just sitting. I think the group that is planning thinks they are the only ones on task, but in reality, it is their exclusiveness that has left the others feeling unheard. So the others resort to their defense mechanisms of acting like they don’t care or just being off task, or sitting silently to protect oneself.” Frustration and anger became increasingly evident as the day wore on.

Watching this process unfold was a huge learning experience for Audrey, who generally runs a structured classroom. “I’m questioning my own teaching strategies this year and have to wonder if we had had several chances to try this where students led the classroom, would they have learned to be more productive now?” wrote Audrey. “I’ve taught enough years to know the answer to that is of course. They need opportunities to practice and apply what we learn in WhyTry in ‘real-life activities.’”

Finally, the students came to Audrey to announce that they had finalized their idea. But when Audrey inquired further, it was evident that not everyone had contributed. She shared the observations she’d made in her notebook, and a profound silence fell over her students. “Every person in the room knows they have to take accountability for why this day, in the end, was a failure when it came to one group coming together to accomplish this challenge. No one was perfect today,” Audrey later wrote. She challenged her students to go home and think about how they could truly apply the principles and tools of WhyTry to come together and create their project. They agreed, vowing to do better tomorrow.

At the end of the day, Audrey wrote in her notebook, “Although today’s objective of getting a group plan down on paper that everyone was involved with, failed, I feel the students and I learned a lot from today, and I will consider this one of the best teaching days in my career… even if I stumbled into it by accident.”

Despite her usual insistence on deadlines and order, Audrey let the students run the show again the next day, and was impressed this time. She wrote, “Students are way different today, and in a good way… All of them seemed very aware of their behavior, and this introspective way of thinking is allowing for progress. 35 minutes into class, everyone agrees on a plan and wants to get to work.”

There were, however, still roadblocks. Five days into the project, the students decided they weren’t happy with it and voted to start over. Audrey wrote, “My mind is racing as to ‘now they will never finish.’ However, how can I stop them when all they want is to create something of the highest standards? … They clearly don’t want to let me or each other down. They are 8^th graders who typically only care about just getting the assignment done as quickly as possible, and today that is not the case.” The students spent the rest of Day 5 formulating a new plan.

Finally, in the last few minutes of class on Day 10, the class proudly finished the mural. They wanted to march it outside and show it off immediately. “I wonder what happened to my 8^th graders who shy away from looking smart and wanting others to see how hard they worked. It excites me to see the level of pride they take in their mural,” wrote Audrey.

Audrey told the class she was proud of the ways they had used the tools of WhyTry during the planning and executing of the mural. Afterward, they held a well-deserved celebration party. “Interestingly,” wrote Audrey, “They tell me that had they not fallen on the first day of working together, they didn’t think they would have accomplished the challenge.”

Audrey’s class is living proof of one of the fundamental messages of WhyTry: that the process of tackling a challenge can be just as valuable as the end result.

The description of the mural, as written by the students, is below:

“Our mural has two sides. One side represents what life is like when you use Why Try and one side represents what it is like when you don’t use Why Try. (They call them the good and the bad side.) It begins with the words “Why Try” on each side. On the good side, the words are clear and easy to read and on the bad side, the words are being torn up. The bridge is central to the theme. The first mural did not have a bridge. We added the bridge to show that a person can travel to either side depending on whether they use the tools of Why Try or not. The bridge is also slanted upward to represent that getting to the good side is an uphill climb, as we learned in the Reality Ride. It is much easier to slide down to the bad side. On the good side, there are paths that can lead you somewhere. On the bad side, people are just left roaming aimlessly with no real direction. This is symbolic again of what Why Try does for you. The mural itself is very representative of the lifting the weight in that it is split and one side is better for you than the other. On the good side, the playground offers opportunities to play and have fun. The opposite is true on the bad side. The people on the good side have made good choices to keep their river clean and therefore have the opportunity to fish. You cannot do this on the bad side. The sky is clear and the view is clear on the good side whereas on the bad side, it is cloudy and dark. In general, the overall climate is just better on the good side. The view is clearer because you have climbed the wall. You have freedom, opportunity, and self-respect.”

Making today relevant

Mark Fuller, former Olympic wrestler, knows the reality of reaching his dreams against all odds.

WhyTry keynote speaker Mark Fuller recently spoke before an audience of counselors, teachers, students, and other youth mentors to talk about finding relevancy with today’s youth.

Mark began his speech with a passionate statement: “What you do day in and day out saved my life.” He repeated this statement once more, visibly emotional, before diving in to his own personal story.

Mark’s childhood memories include divorce, loneliness, and a suicidal mother who drank constantly to fight the nightmare of schizophrenia. “I would go to school every day wanting to be like the other kids… wanting to be a person that understood love… but it wasn’t that way for me,” he said. “My acting out at school became pretty proliferated.”

When Mark was 11 years old, however, people around him began to reach out. He started to participate in school wrestling. He was encouraged to reach his dreams by coaches and teachers that Mark says literally saved his life.

Mark began to set goals. He wanted to win a league wrestling championship. He wanted to win state. He wanted be on the U.S. Olympic wrestling team.

Because Mark was surrounded by a network of support, he reached every one of these goals. He owes his success in the Olympic games to one coach who encouraged him to break down his training schedule into six months, then into three-month quarters, then into each month, each week, and each day leading to the games. “The key in helping our youth is to make today relevant,” said Mark.

Often, Mark said, youth have a perspective of life that is limited to what is happening today. If we can help them see that the choices they make today have long-term consequences, he said, we can help them “climb over the wall” that is blocking them from seeing their potential and help them reach their dreams.

Contact us to book Mark as a keynote speaker at your next event.