Motivate

Yesterday we got the chance to discuss teachers and education with four of the students from district C, and something that I couldn’t help but notice was that all four of these students we student leader and extremely self-motivated. I was a self-motivated person and was in all A.P. classes, so these are students that I can relate to very well. And while hearing these students discuss what they like and what motivates them I felt like I was hearing myself. This is a little scary because that is just one type of student.

I spent most of the panel time thinking of how a non-self-motivated student would answer these questions. I hate admitting this, but the more than a hundred children I work with everyday consist of only a handful of self-motivated students. The rest do their school work because they want go to the next grade and don’t want detention. One of the students discussed feeling that students wanted them to fail first so they can build on top of failures, and they felt like risks were okay. I don’t see that in many of the students I help with homework, but I try to develop that.

So often I see children not wanting to attempt things because they feel they will do it wrong, and what is the purpose of putting in effort if you will get it wrong. I am starting to think that one of the most important things in a classroom is trying, and learning from failure, something that seems to be missing from a lot of classrooms. This could include multiple drafts to be examined by the teacher or maybe a practice test where the teacher can go over every problem to make sure students can pin point the areas where they need help and then the teacher can help them before the final exam. I personally cannot remember multiple drafts in high school, and this definitely puts a stress on students which can sometimes cause students to completely shut down.

Motivation seems to be absent in many students, so how will you help motivate your students to put in the work needed to succeed.