0.8 Mirci, p., loomis, c., & Hensley, p. (september 2011). social  (Page 14/19)

If you were falling behind they really didn’t follow-up with you. They didn’t really care. They didn’t notice me. I had to miss three months of school and no one said anything to me about being absent. My teachers seemed to give up on struggling students and focused on “good” students.

Purpose in life

Dewey (1897) wrote: “I believe that education…is a process of living and not a preparation for future living…I believe that school must represent life… (p. 7).” Educators model their own purpose in life when they form positive relationships with students, respect and value diversity, and “reach for a more meaningful understanding of themselves and their world” (Murphy, 1961, p. 9).

Marzno’s (1998) model of the self-system has revealed that students need to be in school environments that provide opportunities for them to experience relevance in their lives. In describing this category, Marzano drew primarily on the thoughts of Viktor Frankl. These thoughts were based on Frankl’s belief that all people deal with issues of personal meaning or purpose regarding their lives (1959). Frankl (1969) indicated that educators could bestow on students a sense of meaning but could be powerful in modeling that they found meaning or purpose in life that included being a teacher. Students have needed to find meaning or purpose in their school life in order for engagement in learning to occur (Patakos, 2008).

According to Maria, “I was feeling so lost and sad. I wasn’t sure there was a purpose to my life.” Susan expressed fear regarding her purpose in life when she was immersed in negativity: “I was so afraid that I wouldn’t graduate and I knew without a diploma that my options in life in terms of going to college or getting a good job were slight.” Tyrone shared how his sense of purpose in life was eroded when he was labeled at-risk: “I fell into a downward spiral. Nothing seemed to matter. I couldn’t even think of my life having any meaning.” Rosa stated: “I couldn’t see beyond my own sadness.”

Marzano (1998) asserted that the category of purpose in life probably is the most important:

A strong case can be made that this set of beliefs [i.e. beliefs about one’s own purpose in life] ultimately exerts control over all other elements in the self-system because the purpose identified for one’s life dictates that the individual considers important (p. 59).

This suggests that educators need to establish relationships with all students and interact with them as active sense-making agents. In the midst of standardization with curriculum, high-stakes testing, and labeling of students, administrators must help teachers and other stakeholders understand that learning occurs within relationships where adults help students envision a future:

Possible selves are cognitive representations of an individual’s future. The extent to which students have developed clear concepts of who they might become in the future enable them to develop skills and gather resources that add up to a sense of self-efficacy. (Marzano, Pickering,&Hefebower, 2011, p. 16)