Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Technique 60: Precise praise
Building student motivation and trust

Whereas Positive Framing focuses on how you make constructive or critical feedback feel motivating, caring, and purposeful to the recipient, Precise Praise is about managing positive feedback to maximize its focus, benefit, and credibility. Although it might seem like the simplest thing in the world, positive reinforcement helps students more if it's intentional, and you must constantly defend against the potential for it to become empty or disingenuous, especially through overuse. When we over-rely on “excellent” and “awesome” to stamp every interaction we have with a child—what I sometimes call the state of “awesome awesomeness”—we eliminate our ability to truly and genuinely celebrate the accomplishments that are indeed excellent and awesome when they really do occur.

Reinforce Actions, Not Traits

Positive reinforcement is a response to an action that has just occurred: a student does something well, and you tell her she's done a nice job. At its best, positive reinforcement is also about the future. You don't just want a student to feel good about having done something correctly, you want to help her understand how to succeed again the next time. Even more deeply, you want to reinforce a way of thinking about learning that embraces struggle and adversity—relishes it even. Carol Dweck's seminal research on this topic, discussed in her book Mindset, has shown that in the long run, people who have a growth mindset far outpace those with a fixed mindset. Her research suggests that the difference is one of the strongest predictors of success. People with a fixed mindset see intelligence and skill as something static. You're smart, or you're not. You're good at something, or you're not. People with a growth mindset see intelligence and skill as something you develop. You work hard, and you get better. Smart isn't what you are; it's what you do. Individuals with a fixed mindset see a challenge and think, “Oh, no. This is going to be difficult.” Individuals with a growth mindset see a challenge and think, “Oh, boy. This is going to be difficult.”

Dweck finds that praise is central to the development of growth mindset. If students are praised for traits (“You're smart”), they become risk averse: they worry that if they fail, they won't be smart anymore. If students are praised for actions (“You worked hard, and look!”), they become risk tolerant because they understand that the things within their control—their actions—determine results. It's critical then to praise actions, not traits, and further to carefully identify actions that students can replicate. You are praising them in part to help them see the inside of the success machine: the more actionable the thing you reinforce, the more students can replicate their success. “Go back and look at your draft, Maria. See those cross-outs and rewrites? That's why your final draft is so strong.”

You can see this in the video Steve Chiger: Kudos, of North Star Academy English teacher Steve Chiger. At first Steve walks up to a student and tells her she's done well. We pause the video here to let you reflect: What's her takeaway? What does she conclude about her success? She knows Mr. Chiger thinks she did something great, but not what and why. Not how to do it again. Perhaps his praise made her feel good, but with so many questions maybe it doesn't quite feel genuine.

But then it's as if Steve recognizes this. He doubles back and answers all of those questions. The student realizes I was sharp in class because I prepped well and read carefully and made notes. I can do that again.

Suddenly the praise has taken on a whole new role. She can see the road map that was hidden before. He has helped her to see what has caused her success and what to keep doing.

Offer Objective-Aligned Praise

I have a secret life working with coaches of sports franchises. (If you want to know more about it, you can check out my book The Coach's Guide to Teaching.) In that world, one of my favorite videos to show is of all-world basketball player Steph Curry getting feedback from all-world basketball coach Steve Kerr.

The interaction (you can watch it here: https://www.coachsguidetoteaching.com/; scroll down through about 12 videos) takes place on the bench as Kerr shows Curry a set of data about his performance in the game so far. Uncharacteristically, Curry is having a rough night—or at least a less-brilliant-than-usual night.

But Kerr wants Curry to be aware of the things he is doing right, so he will persist in doing them. In the long run, they will cause Curry and the team to succeed. One of the most important things a coach can do is to help players attend to the signal (what's important to success) and not the noise (all the other things that distract us from what's important). What are the actions that will cause me to be successful over the long run, regardless of the outcome of this single moment?

That's what Kerr does in the video. He's helping Curry—yes, even Steph Curry—see the signal: when he is on the floor and plays up-tempo, great things that he is not fully aware of are happening and will continue to happen. The goal of the praise is not to make Curry feel better and build his confidence—Curry has plenty of that. The goal is to help him know what to replicate. That is in many ways the greatest power of praise.

One of the keys to helping students succeed is giving them accurate attributions, to “regularly point out the causes of pupil success and failure [and] help them see how effort and approach make a difference,” in Mccrea's words. Kerr is helping Curry make an accurate attribution. Play up-tempo—replicate what you are doing in that aspect of your game—and you will succeed. As indeed Curry did, being crowned NBA champion later that year.

Of course, praising (or positively reinforcing) actions means calling out things like hard work and diligence, but some of the best teachers I've observed align their praise to learning objectives. Suppose students are working on including strong transitions in their writing. As you Circulate (technique 25) and observe, you specifically reinforce those who have used transitions or, better, those who have gone back and added to or revised their transitions to make them better. Perhaps you even use a Show Call (technique 13) to show off their work. “Scholars, look up here. This is Melanie's paper. Look at this paragraph. She included a solid transition, but then she went back and revised it to make it capture the contrast between the paragraphs more clearly. Now her paper really holds together. That's how you do it.” Now, not only does Melanie know what was behind her success, not only does she understand that success is determined directly by her own actions, but the rest of the class sees it, too.

Another benefit of Precise Praise connects back to what Shawn Achor calls the Tetris Effect. Essentially, by training our brains to look for and appreciate the positive, we learn to see things more positively overall. Achor writes, “Just as it takes days of concentrated practice to master a video game, training your brain to notice more opportunities takes practice focusing on the positive.” By using Precise Praise to help students notice all that they are doing that is right or exceptional, we are also training them to see the learning community as a positive place. We are also, of course, training ourselves to see the same. Imagine the effect that this habit has on the struggling first-year teacher, in the classroom where everything may not be exactly as she or he had hoped. By training herself to precisely name that which is going well, she not only makes that behavior more replicable for students, but lets herself celebrate that which is worthy—and hopefully avoids the doom loop of narration that can overwhelm so many well-intended, early-career teachers.

Differentiate Acknowledgment from Praise

Acknowledgment is what you often use when a student meets your expectations. Praise is what you use when a student exceeds expectations. An acknowledgment merely describes a productive behavior or perhaps thanks a student for doing it, without adding a value judgment and with a modulated tone. Praise adds judgment words like “great” or “fantastic” or the kind of enthusiastic tone that implies that such words might apply. “Thanks for that comment, Marcus” is an acknowledgment; “Fantastic insight, Marcus” is praise. “Marcus is ready” is acknowledgment; “Great job, Marcus” is praise. Distinguishing the two is important, as reversing some of the examples will demonstrate. If I tell Marcus it's fantastic that he's ready for class, I suggest that this is more than I expect from my students. Ironically, in praising this behavior I tell my students that my standards are pretty low and that perhaps I am a bit surprised that Marcus met my expectations. Perhaps they aren't expectations after all. Either way, praising students for merely meeting expectations may reduce the degree to which they do so over the long run. It also makes your praise seem “cheap.” If that happens, it also means that when Marcus writes a powerful response to a piece of literature and you call it “fantastic,” you will be describing it in a manner on par with how you described coming to class on time, and this may perversely diminish the accomplishment in his eyes. In the long run, a teacher who continually praises what's expected risks trivializing both the praise and the things she really wishes to label “great,” eroding the ability to give meaningful verbal rewards and to identify behavior that is truly worthy of notice. In short, save your praise for when it is truly earned and use acknowledgment freely to reinforce expectations.

It's important to add that, as with any technique, it is essential here that you deeply know your students. There may be students for whom completing a homework assignment is, in fact, extraordinary. When that is the case, a more private moment in which you praise and appreciate the effort it may have taken for that student to set themselves up for success and to establish a new and better habit is more than warranted, it is desirable. What you want to avoid is public praise for a behavior that, for most students, is not out of the ordinary at all.

Modulate and Vary Your Delivery

Because teachers most often give reinforcement, positive and negative, in a public setting (that is, in a room with twenty-five other people in it), it's critical to be attentive to the degree to which a statement engages others in the room: Is it loud or quiet, public or private? Do others overhear it?

Generally, privacy is beneficial with critical feedback. As I discuss in Chapter Eleven, whispered or nonverbal reminders assume the best about students: they allow them to self-correct without being called out in public. The private individual correction discussed in technique 55, Least Invasive Intervention, is a classic example of this. But what about the reverse? Should praise therefore be loud? Turns out it's not quite that simple. Positive reinforcement works best when it is genuine and memorable. To make it memorable, you'll want it to stand out a bit, keeping its format a bit unpredictable.

A bit of public praise can be powerful—you stop the class to read Shanice's sentence aloud and say to the class, “Now that is how a strong, active verb can give muscle to a sentence!” People can't replicate it if they don't know about it, so that's one clear benefit to public praise. In addition, the fact that you thought Shanice's work was so good that everybody should hear will make your words memorable to her—but they will stand out more if all praise isn't public. Part of what's powerful about the public delivery is that it's a bit unexpected, so it can also be powerful to walk up to Shanice and whisper, “Now that is a strong, active verb. It sounds like you wrote this for a college paper.” In fact, you capture the greatest benefit by delivering positive reinforcement using an unpredictable variety of settings and volumes.

Among the benefits of private praise is that it often sounds especially genuine to the listener because, implicitly, it is private and therefore only about her, as opposed to public praise, which is also about those who hear it and your desire for them to observe and possibly replicate what the student you're praising has done. The power of pulling Shanice aside as she enters the classroom and saying, “I just wanted to tell you that I graded the exams last night, and yours was really outstanding,” may be equal to or even greater than your public recognition of her work. When a teacher takes a moment to speak to a student privately, she intimates that what she is going to say to that student is very, very important, and this raises a question: What could be so important? To find that it is a response to your excellent work is both powerful and unexpected for a student.

One further benefit of private praise is that it creates uncertainty and additional privacy around all private interactions, and this is immensely productive. If all of my private and quiet conversations with students were critical (that is, they were all private individual corrections), students might become defensive upon my approach. Further, other students might be motivated to eavesdrop, knowing that listening in might provide them with the juicy details of a classmate's misfortune. Most people can't help but be curious about such things. If, however, my approaching or leaning down to speak quietly with a student is just as likely to be an example of private individual precise praise (PIPP, also discussed in Chapter Eleven), then students will consider the approach with balanced equanimity, and their classmates will have no incentive to eavesdrop. Either message is thus heard more openly by the intended recipient and ignored by those for whom it's not intended.

That said, there are also benefits to loud praise and praise that's semiprivate—that is, deliberately intended to be overheard by others. Praise always walks the line between the benefit of allowing others to overhear what's praiseworthy and thus encouraging them to seek to emulate it, and the benefit of the genuine sincerity of its just being about the recipient. In terms of how to balance these benefits, my sense is that both are more powerful if they aren't entirely predictable and that although socializing and influencing others through praise are beneficial, they're less critical than the long-term benefit of maintaining the credibility and genuineness of praise. I would skew toward privacy a bit more for the most substantive feedback to a student.