You know the pyramid, right? With food and water at the bottom, then safety, belonging, and esteem, and self-actualization sitting in a tiny triangle at the top.

I’ve seen this in more PD sessions than I can count over the last 25 years, and I always assumed Abraham Maslow drew it.

But he never did, not once in any of his published work.

The first published version of the pyramid showed up in 1960, in a business journal article called “How Money Motivates Men,” where a consulting psychologist argued the pyramid could help managers get maximum motivation out of workers at the lowest cost.

Maslow himself described human needs as fluid, with lots of them operating at the same time, which sends a very different message than a pyramid you have to climb one level at a time.

That difference matters in schools more than you might realize.

When we take “Maslow before Bloom” literally, it’s easy to end up with one group of students debating whether their town should build a new skate park, while across town, kids get a worksheet packet because somebody decided they weren’t ready for higher-order thinking yet.

Nobody sets out to lower expectations for those kids, but the pyramid makes the decision feel logical, and even kind.

The version most of us learned is missing something else, too. Late in his life, Maslow added a level above self-actualization, and it changes how we think about what kids (and adults) need in order to grow. It connects to six weeks he spent with the Blackfoot indigenous people in 1938, where what he saw turned a lot of his assumptions upside down.

​In the latest Truth for Teachers podcast episode, I get into the missing level, the research behind it, and one way to build it into your classroom this week, including for the kids who are struggling the most.

If you’d rather read, the full transcript is on the blog.

Enjoy!

Angela
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P.S. I've also made a YouTube video essay on how Maslow’s self-actualization got rebranded as a wellness trend (and tied it to Don Draper's experience in the Mad Men finale.)

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