INTRODUCTION
T
he central premise of this book is that you can change the negative behaviors of many of the most challenging students you will ever teach. I do not promise that this will be easy, nor do I promise this will happen 100 percent of the time, and I do not promise that it will happen quickly. I do, however, promise that it is possible—in fact, it is very likely—and this book will show you how.
Reeves’s skeptical friend took him up on the
In To Sell Is Human, Daniel Pink (2012) tells a story about Rosser Reeves, an American advertising executive who was one of the first advertisers to create television ads for presidential candidates in the 1950s. The story Pink (2012) relates is a powerful example of how the tools of persuasion, properly applied, can work so effectively to change human behaviors:
Almost immediately, a few people dropped coins
One afternoon, Reeves and a colleague were having lunch in Central Park. On the way back to their Madison Avenue office, they encountered a man sitting in the park, begging for money. He had a cup for donations and beside it was a sign, handwritten on cardboard, that read: I am blind. Unfortunately for the man, the cup contained only a few coins. His attempts to move others to donate money were coming up short. Reeves thought he knew why. He told his colleague something to the effect of: “I bet I can dramatically increase the amount of money that guy is raising simply by adding four words to his sign.”
wager. Reeves then introduced himself to the beleaguered man, explained that he knew something about advertising, and offered to change the sign ever so slightly to increase donations. The man agreed. Reeves took a marker and added his four words, and he and his friend stepped back to watch.
into the man’s cup. Other people soon stopped, talked to the man, and plucked dollar bills from their wallets. Before long, the cup was running over with cash, and the once sad-looking blind man, feeling his bounty, beamed. What four words did Reeves add? It is springtime and. The sign now read: It is springtime, and I am blind. (pp. 133–134)
This is an example of how subtle strategies, which I call soft tactics, can have an enormous impact on perceptions and behaviors. As educators, many of us have faced situations where no matter what we try, we simply cannot seem to change these students’ behaviors. Students who fit this description often don’t seem to care much about their own learning, and their behaviors in the classroom often have a profoundly negative effect on teaching and learning. I’ve been a teacher since 1972, much of that time in
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