Motivation, the unspoken variable

   The latest and greatest curricula come and go. Now, it's the Common Core Standards.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for higher expectations and higher rigor.  We need to catch up with the rest of the world. There are also the best ways of delivering it, Marzano, Bloom, etc.  These too are valuable in and of themselves.  However, there is one fundamental assumption all of these make, and to me, it's a fatal flaw. At least Marzano comes close. In his methodology, if you make the material relevant, then at last the student MAY comply and do the work.  This, then, is the assumption, that the students WANT to do what is asked, and WILL do the work.  Big assumption.  The truth of the matter is, research for all of these methods is done in a controlled environment, that's what research is. Schools are not controlled environments!  We can't assume the students will do the work, we have to get there on purpose. We have to elicit the motivational strategy of the student and plug into it, map it across to the academic subjects.  That is one of the fundamental keys to the approach I use in my work.  I have seen grades skyrocket with just this alone.
    It seems so simple, yet it is almost always overlooked.  If we trained teachers in how to do this (which I do, by the way), just imagine the results.  There wouldn't be nearly as much behavior issues or resistance. There is a growing body if research linking motivation to academic performance.  The more focus that is put here initially, the better the other "latest and greatest" things will work.