Largely because of its behaviorist roots and despite several progressive education movements, external control has been the primary motivation technique used by educators since the dawn of formal schooling in the United States. Decades of recent research, however, has led to a paradigm shift of sorts, suggesting that by challenging their mental models about the causes of student behavior, educators might learn to motivate students differently and more effectively, thus, enhancing students' opportunities for social and emotional growth. Based on the theory and research regarding the relations between motivation and behavior management and my own experience as a high school principal, I argue that educators can better facilitate learning by abandoning external control as a behavior management technique and employ more productive motivational strategies like compassion and behavioral freedom.