How to Get Students to Stick to Their Goals

One of the questions we hear most as teachers is, "How do you motivate students to succeed?" That's an excellent question. Honestly, and unfortunately, there is no true and tried, surefire method to achieve student success. If there was, we wouldn't be attending new professional development sessions every year to learn the latest in student/teacher interaction. We would have simply been taught this method from the very beginning and our days would consist of insurmountable success and happiness.

But let's become grounded for a moment.

Motivating students to succeed has a ton of variables ranging from the subject to student. I recently read an interesting article on Life Hack where the author, James Clear, discusses the most important factor in setting goals and sticking to them. He essentially states that many Americans set goals such as exercising, dieting, or finishing a long piece of work, yet fail to stick to these goals. He then cites a study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology that pit three groups of subjects working toward a common goal:

• The first group was asked to keep track of how much they exercised over the next two weeks and then asked to read three paragraphs of an unrelated novel before they left. 
• The second group was asked to do the same, however, they were given a brief lecture over the benefits of exercising instead of the unrelated novel. This was the group they were attempting to motivate. 
• The third group was asked to do the same, however,in addition to the motivational speech, this group was asked to sit down and write out a plan showing when and where they were going to work out over the next two weeks.

What did the results show?

Group one showed they exercised 38% of the time. 

Group two showed they exercised 35% of the time.

And group three showed they exercised 91% of the time. 

The results of this study made me think: we try to motivate students to make and stick to goals for our class, but how often do we actually sit down with that student and construct a plan to achieve these goals? As the study shows, motivation isn't enough. Why? Because it wears off. I had a colleague once tell me that motivation and bathing were similar in that they both needed to be done daily. However, motivating student to spark an interest followed by a written statement of how and when they will achieve these goals would seem to make a difference. 

Of course there would still be students who fail to stick to their goals, but that's when we need to get their attention again and again and again. Think about it, as an adult, how many times have you told yourself you're going to stick to something only to fizzle out? It's tough to change one's habits and mindset. Perhaps by sitting down with students one on one and writing up a plan to help them overcome that which they struggle with, whether its their work ethic or a specific learning target, is exactly what the doctor ordered when it comes to getting students to stick to their goals. 

If you're interested in James Clears' website, you can find it at Jamesclear.com.  He write about strategies that help us stick to good habits. It's something I think we could all definitely benefit from.