My students' motivations don't always match up with my own lesson plans. I find this to be particularly true in the one‐to‐one computing environment where students are more apt to fall down an internet rabbit hole and explore their deepest curiosities than confront whatever task I put in front of them. In most cases, I resist getting off‐task and redirect them back to my assignment, but once in a while, these detours teach me a thing or two about what truly motivates the learners in front of me.

In 2015, I taught a third‐grade technology course at a mid‐sized suburban intermediate school in central Massachusetts. I had gotten comfortable as a middle school English teacher at the start of my career, and I was not accustomed to opening so many Capri Suns in the cafeteria or tying shoelaces on the playground. Nevertheless, an opportunity to work for my most respected mentor arose, and I agreed to give the younger grades a whirl. It was the school's first year going one‐to‐one with iPads, and I would be there to ease the growing pains for students and teachers alike. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Leading up to the new gig, I felt compelled by the research of Dr. Lisa Stoddard, a professor of environmental and sustainable studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Stoddard's work recognized the perils of screen time. “We all love our screens: movies and sports on our flat screens, games, and Facebook on our phones, and Netflix on our iPads,” she told me. “But, this shift in our work, school, and entertainment culture has led to kids ages eight to ten spending about eight hours per day on screens, instead of the two to three hours recommended by doctors; this shift in culture has also resulted in adults and kids spending less time outside in nature” (2018). Stoddard studied the direct links between a lack of access to nature and increasing rates of ADHD and childhood depression. She estimated that diagnoses of childhood depression doubled in the 2010s. “Research shows that when we expose and engage our kids in nature, there are multiple developmental, cognitive, emotional, and physical benefits,” said Stoddard. “This includes improving their ability to concentrate, improved academic performance, reduced stress and aggression, improved social skills, and reduced risk of obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.” As a new technology teacher, I was conflicted.

How could I reconcile the detriments of forced screen time during the school day with the benefits of state‐of‐the‐art educational technology? After speaking with Stoddard at length, I got an idea. I proposed we would have technology class outside for as long as the New England climate allowed. Our access to mobile devices gave us great flexibility to morph into an outdoor course. I felt sure we could forge a deep connection with nature while leveraging a modern tool.

I began to familiarize myself with a very simple platform called MIT App Inventor with the idea of coding a basic application to help students learn about our environmental surroundings. They would collect natural artifacts, research the species they discovered on school grounds, and help me write basic code to launch an app. With a few exceptions, the kids were pretty jazzed to get outside and explore the local ecosystem.

Right away, I began to realize my own limitations. What did I know about classifying local plants? My students photographed over 25 different species of trees on day one, and I wasn't sure where to go from there. Meanwhile, building an app—no matter how simple—was more challenging than I had ever imagined.

Then, something strange happened. Just before the Thanksgiving break, one of my third graders arrived at school with a thick white binder full of old news clippings, maps, and photographs. “These belonged to my uncle,” he told me.

I spent the whole vacation pouring over the binder. It turned out the 25 unique species of trees planted in rows outside my classroom window had not grown up by accident. Class after class, we had mulled about a bonafide arboretum planted by my student's uncle, James Courville. I had no idea.

“An arboretum is like a garden of trees,” I explained to the third‐grade students when we returned from break. We spread out a blanket under the bright yellow foliage of a ginkgo tree and I began to read aloud the story of James Courville.

“Courville taught science in our school building in the 1960s,” I told them. “He was so bothered by the ugly dirt pit outside his classroom that he wrangled his students to fill in the hole, plant an expansive collection of trees, and assemble a corresponding field guide.” I read aloud to them from one of the yellowed documents where he had written, “It will be a gift to our students and future generations.” That last part sent a shiver up my spine. It was as if James Courville was speaking directly to me.

I looked at the semi‐circle of cherubic faces. One of them yawned. Another one picked his nose.

“Isn't this exciting?” I asked them.

“Can we collect rocks?” the nose picker replied.

“Do you think we could get in touch with Mr. Courville?” I asked Courville's young nephew.

Before he could respond, a gregarious little redhead poked her head out from behind an iPad and said, “He's dead.” The whole class gasped. “Drowned in a scuba accident,” she told me, matter‐of‐factly.

Next, the effusive eight‐year‐old flipped her iPad around to display an obituary for one James Courville. Sure enough, the glowing screen revealed he had drowned in Provincetown on an oceanic expedition in 1978 when he was in his early forties. My stomach turned. Now, they were all listening.

“My dad says he buried an engine out here,” Courville's nephew piped up. “His class had a funeral for it and everything.”

I was even more confused.

“It's time to go inside,” I told them. “Find your turn‐and‐talk partner to answer the discussion questions on our walk back.” I hadn't bargained for a tragic scuba accident or a combustion burial ground; I needed to gather my thoughts and make a smooth transition. On the walk back through the arboretum, I could hear every single one of my students abuzz with excitement. It didn't stop there.

For the next week, I fielded questions to which I had very few answers. “It's a sad story, but it sounds like he died doing what he loved,” I told them. “At least he passed away in nature.” Their moony eyes stared up at me in horror.

Inspired by Courville's mystery, our app, which had been a boon to my students before these discoveries, became their greatest passion. We used a discussion protocol to come up with a concept and then set to work modifying a simple drawing application that students elected to name “Tree Trace.” By the winter break, it was live on the Google Play Store. Players could trace the shapes of different leaves from the arboretum in order to identify each species. It was simple, yet engaging.

I thought Courville's family might be upset with me for dredging up old wounds, but instead, they thanked me for keeping his legacy and the arboretum alive. Come spring, my room was filled with students every lunch and recess period. They called themselves the “Maple Leaves” and even wrote a theme song about the arboretum. One of them brought in a metal detector so we could go out searching for the engine—a symbolic gesture Courville turned out to have orchestrated in condemnation of air pollution, long before his time. Another student convinced her father, a biology professor at College of the Holy Cross, to help us author an updated field guide. We even got an article about the arboretum published in the local newspaper. I scrambled to make sure all of these unplanned activities fit within the parameters of my technology curriculum. The kids continued to push for more.

In the end, we got in touch with many of Courville's former students and assembled enough donations to add our own tree to the arboretum. The emotional investment that Courville's story elicited was remarkable. Fear of my students' curiosities about his life and death had nearly caused me to veto the whole thing, but in the end, I was glad I let their motivations soar.

On the anniversary of his death that summer, I rode my bike out to the beach where his accident had taken place. I sat there for an hour, expecting to see a whale or some other miraculous display of nature. Nothing happened. I realized it was my curious students who had conjured Courville's magic. They had been determined to attempt academic feats far above their grade level and conquered one after another because of their steadfast motivation. No majestic whale sighting could ever top the wonder I had witnessed on their faces. I filled my pockets with rocks from the beach and when I got back to school, I placed one under each tree in the arboretum. Pride and grief welled up inside of me for a man I had never known.

The arboretum taught me not to diffuse the strong emotions of my students. Emotion is an effective pathway for practitioners of small teaching who are seeking to motivate their learners and themselves. You don't need to solve a half‐century‐old mystery to foster intrinsic motivation, but you shouldn't shy away from the opportunity if it presents itself. In this chapter, I explore how teachers can elicit and work with the emotions already present in their classrooms to give students frequent motivational bursts throughout the year.

WHAT'S THE THEORY?

Emotions like love and regret can interfere with our abilities as learners, or they can accelerate them. You've probably had an “aha” moment at some point in your life when emotions were running high. Maybe you decided to get out of a toxic relationship. Maybe you got an idea for the next great American novel. Or, maybe you decided you do like asparagus after all. Whatever it was, a strong emotion helped capture your attention. The same is true of our students.

Emotions can be aroused by sounds, pictures, sensations, and interactions. They can be conscious or unconscious. Regardless of where they come from, emotional reactions have a direct impact on our working memories. For this reason, teachers who learn to direct the emotions of their students can strengthen the neural pathways in a learner's brain to create long‐term memories.

One recent study appearing in Advances of Cognitive Psychology examined the role of positive and negative emotions on working memory (Gokce et al., 2021). Researchers asked participants to play a memory game with task‐irrelevant images designed to elicit negative, positive, or neutral emotions. The study revealed negative affective pictures reduced working memory capacity, while positive pictures increased working memory capacity compared to neutral images (Gokce et al., 2021). Furthermore, researchers concluded, “positive images elicit an approach reaction, where participants are more willing to deal with positive stimuli, while negative stimuli, in contrast, lead to an avoidance reaction” (Gokce et al., 2021).

I am not surprised by their findings. After all, I'm more likely to be on time for a class that makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. I'm also more likely to sit up front, participate, and do my assignments when I feel a positive correlation with a particular teacher or subject. Emotions rule our motivations and therefore our capabilities to learn. Strong emotions result in sharp attention and heightened cognitive capacities.

Self‐transcendence is one of the most powerful emotions in a learning environment. Highly motivated students often share a desire to help other people. A 2014 study titled “Boring but Important” looked closely at the types of purposefulness that inspire learners to persist (Yeager et al., 2014). Surprisingly, self‐oriented motivations like individual career achievements or monetary success proved far less influential than self‐transcendent motivations. Helping students recognize the ways in which their learning can change the world will make them more tenacious in their studies.

It's important to remember that establishing a self‐transcendent purpose is a manner of organizing our goals, whereas reaching a specific goal or objective is a measurable achievement. In a conversation with director of the Purpose and Identity Processes Lab Anthony Burrow, podcast host Shankar Vedantam warned against conflating “goals” with one's “purpose” (2021b). Burrow and Vedantam agreed that doing so inevitably leads individuals to ask themselves “What will become of me once I've accomplished my goal?” Without a sense of purpose, successfully accomplishing the goal can actually leave our students feeling empty and directionless.

Olympian Michael Phelps famously struggled with this sensation throughout his career. “Really, after every Olympics I think I fell into a major state of depression,” Phelps told CNN in 2018, adding that after the 2012 Olympics, he sat alone in his room for upwards of five days without food or sleep, “not wanting to be alive” (Scutti, 2018). Today, Phelps wields his power and influence to destigmatize mental illness and combat suicide. Winning a medal was his goal. Positively influencing America's youth is his purpose.

Burrow explains that while lack of purpose in young people looks like uncertainty, in adults it can feel like unending drudgery and routine. As teachers, it is just as important for us to find a sense of purpose in our work as it is for our students—sometimes even more so. “Purpose is a mood regulator in moments of stress or challenge,” observed Burrow (Vedantam, 2021b). By finding self‐transcendent purpose in our roles as educators, we are better suited to face adversity in the classroom.

Research shows that people with a stronger sense of purpose have greater interpersonal appeal, which leads to more opportunities and fulfillment. This is also true in our classrooms. To measure one's sense of purpose, Burrow suggests asking yourself, “Do you feel your life has a clear direction?” and “Do you feel your daily activities are engaging and important?” (Vedantam, 2021b). He reminds his listeners that cultivating a sense of purpose is a subjective experience that leads to a slower risk of cognitive decline. In the lower grades, a teacher could modify these questions to ask something like: “Do you have big plans for your life?” and “Do you feel like what you do every day is important?”

In other words, the cognitive benefits of finding your “why” is in your own control. Burrow describes the “why” as the orientation of a goal beyond oneself. This sense of purpose can be brought on in one of three ways: gradual self‐discovery, a major life event, or drawing inspiration from someone else's example (Vedantam, 2021b). He concludes by saying, “Having a sense of purpose is associated with greater net‐worth and lower levels of impulsivity” (Vedantam, 2021b). At the very least, we can model the cultivation of purpose for our students in the work that we do every day. At most, we can set students up for health and good fortune.

There is great value in expressing your own enthusiasm as a teacher. Your positive emotions carry over to your students. The more excited you are about teaching, the more social the learning experience becomes for your students. In her book, The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion, Sarah Cavanagh describes a study in which, “The enthusiasm of the educators statistically predicted their students' ratings of enjoyment and perceived value in the subject matter” (2016, p. 64). Your own positive emotions toward learning are contagious. The same goes for your students. A few highly motivated students can energize an entire class, while a handful of yawning complainers can have the opposite effect.

I'm not suggesting you implement trust falls or daily renditions of “Kumbaya.” The models that follow intend to provide an emotional boost and build a culture of lifelong learning in your classroom. Proceed at your own comfort level.

IN SHORT

• Emotional reactions have a direct impact on our students' working memories.
• Negative emotions have been found to reduce the working memory's capacity, while positive emotions increase its capacity.
• Strong emotions result in sharp attention and heightened cognitive capacities for the learners in our classrooms.
• Students who cultivate their larger purpose can use it to guide and organize their smaller goals.
• Ask students to reflect on the following questions to help establish a sense of purpose: “Do you have big plans for your life?” and “Do you feel like what you do every day is important?”
• Finding purpose beyond oneself slows cognitive decline.
• People with a sense of purpose have greater interpersonal appeal, leading to more opportunities.
• Purpose can be discovered through self‐exploration, a major life event, or drawing inspiration from someone else.

MODELS

Emotions play a starring role in the adolescent experience. Even so, there are only a few career paths outside of teaching that rely on capturing those emotions rather than quelling them. Our society rewards silence and compliance. Let's be honest, most adults are fearful of provoking the untamed feelings of children. However, that is exactly how screenwriter Lisa Schultz Boyd spends her days in Hollywood. Boyd is one of the writers on Star Trek: Prodigy, a new animated television series on Nickelodeon. Like a teacher, Boyd's success hinges on her ability to communicate with young audiences in a way that plays to their emotions.

“It was most important to me and the Star Trek: Prodigy writing team to treat our young audience as smart enough to admire good art,” said Boyd. “It helps that only a few of our characters were established previously—and we introduced our main crew of alien orphans for the first time” (2021).

Boyd set to work developing dynamic figures that Gen‐Z could relate to. She grew particularly proud of the show's decision to include a non‐binary character. “We made a point to give them their own choice of pronouns to use,” Boyd said. “I believe young audiences will unconsciously recognize that and accept it as progress.”

Boyd likes writing for children because she finds them especially astute. “I think it's often older audiences who are too set in their ways to appreciate originality and invention in the programs they're watching,” said Boyd. “That's why, no offense to CBS procedurals, but older audiences are their most avid fans. NCIS scripts are structural, formulaic, easily packaged, and enjoyable content for what I call the average armchair detective.” Boyd sees younger audiences as less frightened by risk‐taking. “So long as their shows aren't too adult—violent or sexual,” she specified, “they can understand drama, conflict, and suspense, and appreciate it in a way older audiences do not.” Boyd loves to see kids rooting for complex characters and interpreting emotional consequences. “They have a fresh and biting sense of humor,” she observed (2021).

Boyd relies heavily on her own tween‐age daughter as a test audience subject for Star Trek: Prodigy. One especially helpful realization was that her daughter's favorite characters in books were often the villains with troubled backstories, not the prototypical heroes. “The villain in Prodigy is super awesome and cool and terrifying,” she explained. “Without giving too much away, he is trying to right a wrong that happened in his past that caused the ruination of his home planet—he's not only scary, he's relatable” (2021).

Requiring students to memorize the capital of Ohio or self‐explain an algebra problem won't help them if they don't care about a content area or if they believe they are incapable of learning from it. As teachers, we must strive to make our content relatable. Attitude is everything, including our own. We need to be inspired just as much as our students if we are going to survive in this profession. Like Boyd's confidence in her young audience's ability to recognize and appreciate complex art, we must trust in our students, stoke their curiosities, and fan the flames of inspiration. Small changes make a big difference.

You can activate emotions in your students such as curiosity and a sense of purpose, but you should also consider how to awaken emotions within yourself like enthusiasm and compassion. Motivate your class by charging the environment with beneficial emotions using the following models.

PRINCIPLES

Allan Grigg, known to his fans as KoOoLkOjAk, co‐wrote and co‐produced a No. 1 Billboard hit single with Flo Rida. He worked on popular films including The Hangover, The Lorax, 21 Jump Street, and Pitch Perfect. He successfully collaborated with popular artists Nicki Minaj, Ke$ha, Waka Flocka Flame, and Britney Spears. And, throughout his entire career, he focused on just one thing: emotional impact.

Grigg understands the value of emotion in his art, but he never shies away from the fact that it's a job. “If you want to make an emotional impact, you need to bring forth your entrepreneurialism,” he told me. “Study the greats. Study new artists, producers, and labels. Stay informed on the evolving climate of the biz” (2017). Grigg recognizes the shared humanity in emotions, but also values his potential to motivate and influence others through their emotions. Teachers can do the same. The three principles outlined as follows will help inspire emotions in both you and your students. Strategically embrace the feelings that surface, rather than squashing them under your orthopedic teacher clogs.

SMALL TEACHING QUICK TIPS: MOTIVATING

Not every kid is going to love your content area. They will, however, recognize your attitude toward that content area. Show enthusiasm for your work and student achievement will improve. Use these small, everyday motivational practices that have the power to boost engagement and learning.

• Learn everyone's name, including students you don't have in class. If you can't remember a name, make up a nickname. People love to feel recognized for a good reason. Acknowledge students who contribute and make it easy to do so. Praising students will keep them on‐task more than scolding them will.
• Use storytelling to heighten the emotions of your students. They will be more engaged and more likely to remember your lesson.
• Explicitly state how the overarching goal of your course can help to change the world. Collaborate with community partners and make clear connections between learning and making a difference.
• Don't hide your enthusiasm. If students realize how much you care about your content area, they will be more likely to mirror your attitude and emotions.
• When negative emotions take hold of your students, show them compassion. It's hard to find motivation when you don't feel supported. Be the support person your most challenging student needs in their life.

CONCLUSION

There is a lot of fantastic research cited in the pages of this book, but it would be irresponsible to claim that we are nothing more than receptacles for neural networks. Emotions and attitudes intersect with both teaching and learning in our classrooms every day. Cultivating a sense of inspiration is just as important as fostering knowledge and understanding. We often describe students as being “emotional” or having an “attitude” with a negative connotation. This can be true. After all, every one of us has had to suck it up and go to school or work on a day when we weren't feeling well. On those occasions, we can agree, our effort suffers. I recently experienced this first‐hand amid the challenges of virtual learning.

In December 2020, my husband got COVID. Everyone felt qualified to chime in about how the two of us should navigate our quarantine period under the same roof, but in the end, we took the advice of our City's Chief Medical Director and decided to isolate ourselves from one another. The week before the holiday break is always difficult as a teacher, but this was even worse than usual. My students were trapped behind a computer screen for virtual learning and I was separated from my husband by one big ugly wall.

“It's like I'm Kathy Bates in Misery,” I called through the guest room door, every time I left him a cute little love note and a bowl of soup.

“Still not funny,” he would respond.

I found myself distracted by his presence during the school day. Once, I thought I heard him crying out in pain, but it turned out he was just watching the “Fresh Prince of Bel‐Air Reunion.” To be honest, it was quite sad. RIP James Avery.

Every day, he would go for a walk in the yard. He thought it was cute to throw little rocks at my office window like Romeo while I was trying to administer exit tickets to my students or review my daily objective. “Sorry, I thought the class was over,” he yelled up to the window. My students egged him on. I'm pretty sure he was just hungry for attention.

I started to worry about his dishes, but he told me they were all “taken care of.” I suspected they were piling up in a bin in the closet, so I left a sponge and some dish soap outside his door during my lunch break. He told me they smelled “fine,” but I read that loss of smell was a COVID symptom. Come to think of it, he also claimed he no longer required deodorant. Something about resetting his skin's “natural microbiome?” I cried foul.

I continued to test negative, but my professional focus was lost. During a Zoom faculty meeting, I ordered a Wilson volleyball off Amazon. When it arrived the next day, I painted a face on it so he would have a friend like Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away.

At first, I didn't want to share what was going on at home with my students. When I finally fessed up and told them about my “patient” in the next room, they were very empathetic.

“I thought something was off,” one of them told me, matter‐of‐factly.

They always know.

The students in your class are probably facing a whole host of distracting obstacles. Maybe they struck out on the ball field or at the school dance. Maybe they are in a fight with their best friend. Maybe a major world event has got them doubting the future of humanity. Whatever it is, it's best if they can acknowledge their attitudes and emotions.

In researching peer‐to‐peer connections, I corresponded with Laurie R. Santos, the professor of Yale University's most popular course in history, which focuses on the science of happiness—my favorite emotional state. “There's evidence that a positive mood can boost creativity, so I think it's definitely something to incorporate more often into the classroom experience,” Santos told me. She places particular emphasis on the importance of gratitude in her own class as a means for increasing her students' learning capacity.

First, I have students perform what's called a gratitude list. For seven days, students are asked to write down at least five things for which they are grateful. They can be little things or big things. Students are also asked to do what's called a gratitude visit. Students are told, “Think of one person, still living, who made a big difference in your life but whom you never properly thanked. Find a quiet spot when you have a half‐hour and write a 300‐word, heartfelt testimony to that person, explaining how he or she touched your life and why he or she is meaningful to you. If you'd like to take it to the next level, schedule a time to visit this person by phone or Zoom and share your letter.” Gratitude is a powerful tool for increasing happiness because it intensifies positive memories and forges social bonds. (Santos, 2021)

We have to be purposeful when it comes to manipulating student emotions in the classroom. Bringing everyone to tears or hysterics every day won't do you any favors. Emotions can accelerate learning just as easily as they can offset it. Positive emotions like gratitude, amazement, and astonishment have the ability to motivate our learning. Even negative emotions like bewilderment or embarrassment can sometimes drive us to work harder and overcome our weaknesses. Feeling something is half the battle. The students who will have the most trouble finding inspiration are those who suffer from apathy and indifference.