Sometimes Students Need a Crisis

I was once talking to a professor at a college about getting kids to read at home. She said something that left me speechless. “If you want kids to read at home,” she said, “you need to create a crisis.”

I should have asked a follow question like what she meant or how she did this, but I was so taken back by this response, I literally had no words. It was the word “crisis” that shook me.

You have to create a crisis.

This phrase reverberated in my head for months to come and slowly, I began to test this out in the classroom. It worked.

If you need to change a student's behavior and the usual methods haven't worked, creating a crisis might be what you're looking for.

Now, this shouldn’t really have been a surprise. All of us get stuck in routines and learn to tolerate outcomes we don't actually want. A crisis usually shakes us from our complacency and routines.

A major medical incident could force someone to take action regarding their own health, an action they had failed to do for years.

A spouse saying, “We need to go to marriage counseling” could force a spouse to make changes they had neglected for years.

Looking at the Bible, we see that God uses crises to shake people into change too— Job’s life, Jonah and the great fish, and Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul was literally headed one direction in life, and then God created a crisis, and Paul’s life was forever changed.

The above examples are extreme, but a crisis can also be smaller. A person might stand on the scale one day and be shocked at the number they see—shocked enough that it creates a bit of an identity crisis in that moment which could be the catalyst for change.

We can also create a crisis for ourselves. If you want to run more, sign up for a race. Deadlines create a sort of crisis. This is why some wait until the night before to write the paper. The pressure creates a mini crisis and motivates them to work.

Crises can be huge, or they can be small. They can come from the world and those around us, or they can be self-induced. And while we usually think of a crisis as something we want to avoid, sometimes we are better off after a crisis.

There’s a concept called the Region Beta Paradox which makes a similar point: sometimes we’re better off if our situations get worse. Someone might stay in a less-than-ideal job because it's “not that bad,” or stay in a mediocre dating relationship because leaving feels harder than staying. A bigger problem might force them to act.

Sometimes, we don't change because things aren’t bad enough. We change when they become bad enough that we can no longer tolerate them.

These concepts are helpful in our own lives and they are helpful when dealing with students. Sometimes students get too used to the typical consequences and they need the situation to get worse before they take action and end up in a better spot.

Here’s a few ideas on creating a crisis for students to promote long-term growth.

Make the Cost Visible

I don’t like late work because it wastes a lot of my time and doesn’t benefit my students. I’ve adopted a harsh late policy of 50% off and then a zero after a week. For the first two assignments, I give freshmen plenty of in-class time for students to ask questions and get help submitting their work to the new online system. If a student is even 5 minutes late, I enforce the late policy. Since there’s only one or two assignments in the gradebook, their grade plummets and this creates a crisis for most students who are late. Now, because I’ve conducted a grade audit, I know these are only worth 1-2% of their overall grade, but it doesn’t feel like that when there’s only two grades in the gradebook. They have to sit with this low grade for a while.

I would rather create a crisis now so they learn to not be late, then be flexible and enforce the policy later on with an assignment worth much more. When I do this, you can see the panic in some students’ eyes. And word spreads. Students learn quickly to not be late.

For their third assignment, they have eight days to complete it, including some class time. The computer will not accept assignments past 11:59 pm on the due date. I will not accept this assignment late because they have eight days. This too creates a crisis for some.

The goal here is not to tank their grade where they can’t recover. Again, I know each of these are only worth 1% of their grade and that this crisis is temporary. But some students are so used to turning things in late, and some have grown accustomed to receiving 10% off that those consequences don’t phase them anymore. They need something more jarring. They need a crisis.

Make Avoidance Difficult

Some students hate speaking in front of others, but speaking in front of people gets easier over time. The only way to conquer a fear is to get little exposures to it.

With speeches, I’ve had a few students tell me they aren’t going to do it and will just take the zero. I tell them that is not an option. All students must give a speech in front of their peers. If they refuse, they will receive an incomplete for the class.

Immediately, they brows furrow and confusion spreads across their faces. “An incomplete? What’s that?”

I tell them it means they don’t receive credit for the course. Then I wait.

Again, brows furrow and noses crinkle as the message doesn’t compute. “What?”

I then explain that it’s not failing a class, but it’s not passing either. It’s doing all the work but receiving no credit.

Incompletes are puzzling but I say it confidently, and the crisis has begun. Every student I’ve said this to has completed their speech.

One student got so mad at this, he immediately scribbled out a speech in the next class. A few hours later, when he had cooled down, he said sheepishly, “I wrote my speech on how unfair it is for teachers to not pass students. Can I present that?”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “Yes, that’s fine. As long as I can do a speech right after you explaining my view on the matter.” It went so well, that student never failed to smile and say hello to me in the hall for the next two years till he graduated.

Make the Consequence Meaningful

Most schools and teachers give a zero for any assignment where cheating occurred, and this works to deter most, but not all. Some students will gladly chance 2% of their grade for a few more hours of free time not doing work. A zero doesn't create much of a crisis if the student doesn't care very much about the zero.

I’ve tried various policies over the years with some success, but AI has created new challenges. My school has no additional consequence for repeat offenders, so I decided I needed to try something more serious.

The first time a student cheats in my classroom, they receive a zero for the assignment, it’s recorded in the permanent file, parents are notified, and the student must fill out an Academic Integrity Reflection before continuing to earn credit in class.

For a second offense, the student receives a zero on the assignment, it’s recorded in the permanent file, their semester grade is reduced by 10%, and an Academic Integrity Contract must be signed by student and parent.

For a third offense, the student will fail the class for the semester.

The point is to create enough of a crisis for the student to stop and think. The consequence has to make continuing the behavior feel more costly than changing it.

Let Time Run Out

If there is a question as to whether a student used AI or not for an assignment, give them 24 hours to provide you evidence of their authorship. If no time constraint is placed on this process, there’s no urgency. The process can stretch on for days. But giving students 24 hours to respond creates a situation they have to take seriously.

Time can also create a crisis when students procrastinate. If a student emails you at home three hours before a deadline asking for help, you don't necessarily need to drop everything to rescue them. If you've already explained the assignment and the instructions are available online, the approaching deadline may be exactly what the student needs to motivate them to find the answer for themselves.

Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is resist the urge to remove the pressure that our students' own choices have created.

Let Them Fail

You’ll notice the above examples are a combination of creating a crisis for students and creating circumstances where if students choose, they will walk into a crisis. In the case of failing students, I obviously don’t purposely fail students. They walk into it by not doing their work.

Some students have grown very accustomed to not doing assignments or not turning work in on time. But because of my policies, they can walk into a crisis and some ultimately fail my class. I’m okay with this. I let them fail. I realize that this might be the crisis they need to change things around for the rest of their high school career. Summer school might shake them awake.

I remember one girl failing the first semester of English her freshman year. She had to make up that credit during the summer. I don’t know what happened in her head or at home, but I do know that over the next few years, she was always pleasant towards me, always said hi, and by senior year, intended to major in English. Maybe the failure had nothing to do with it. But something changed.

Of course, we have a choice in how we respond to a crisis and so do students. But that is up to them. Our job is to think about what students need. Creating a crisis for a student—or deciding not to remove a crisis that a student has walked into—is one tool we have. The vast majority of the students I work with do not need this intervention. But some students need to experience a small crisis before they're ready to change.