Getting younger kids motivated to learn at home is hard enough…but how on earth do we motivate high school teens to study during remote learning?
I’ll be real: my 15-year-old really struggles with online learning. His motivation to finish virtual assignments is nil unless I am right on-hand to prompt him to keep going. This wasn’t the case when school was in-person, and I’ve noticed similar lack of teen motivation among his peers.
Their teachers, too, report the change: many teens are in a slump while school is virtual. The disconnect is hard to bridge: without in-person learning, school just feels too ‘far away’ or ‘not real’ to many teens.
How to motivate teens to succeed at virtual assignments:
Make a list.
Helping teens stay organized is more important than ever. My teen has some virtual assignments on Google, some through email, and some via Zoom. He easily loses track.
Lists give structure and order to complicated tasks. They also give us a sense of accomplishment. Lists are basically the little black dress of motivation and task completion.
For teens, a list of what they need to accomplish will help them practice executive functioning skills and organize their day. Lists have an enormous amount of variety, too. You can make a list by subject, or by the day, or by the week. Encourage variety in the list in whatever way supports your teen’s success in school.
Use a timer.
Setting a time for a specified amount of time, followed by a period of rest or reward, is a highly effective time management and study tool. This works because the brain is optimized to work in fairly short—25-45 minute chunks—and the use of reward after work is always effective.
A timer also helps to quantify the amount of effort that is necessary. It’s easy to do things 10 to 15 minutes at a time. This is especially effective if your teen is having a hard time getting started.
Utilize behavioral momentum.
Use what? Behavioral momentum is the scientific jargon for the phenomenon of doing some easy things to work up to doing harder things. Once you get going with some easy tasks and get some successes under your belt, the harder tasks don’t feel so hard. It’s the running start to task completion that gets the car up to speed.
If your teen is having trouble getting started, help them make a list and then ask them to choose a couple of things from the list that will be easy to complete and start with those, followed by something harder.
Break it down.
If your teen looks at their list and nothing on the list looks easy, maybe breaking it down a bit more will help. Make it manageable! Studying for the biology test is a HUGE task that can feel impossible to complete, but breaking it down into tasks such as making a list of vocabulary words, defining words, and writing words on a flashcard are easier tasks to complete.
Support requests for help.
Just like the rest of us, teens get overwhelmed and start to feel bad about how overwhelmed they feel, and then they are extra stuck. It’s a vicious cycle. Encourage your teens to ask for help and give them as much support as you can when they do ask for help.
Set goals.
We all like to know what we’re aiming for. Instead of requesting that your teen ‘do better in school’ or ‘get good grades’, set measurable, realistic goals. If at midterms, your teen has a C grade point average, perhaps the goal for the quarter is to have all B’s. Set a variety of goals, in a range of ‘reach’: a few goals can be set that you’re reasonably certain your teen can accomplish, and a few can be set that will be harder (but even more highly celebrated).
Set rewards.
Remember the token economy concept? Put it in practice for your teen! Start with small rewards for small accomplishments, which will give your teen that dopamine hit that will keep them going. Let them earn larger rewards for bigger accomplishments, such as receiving a goal grade on a test or having a particular GPA at midterms.
Like what you’re learning? Pin it for later!
