Motivation Pt. 2

from JoeUser Forums
As stated before, motivation is a key issue in the classes I'm teaching, or at least the lack of motivation.

What I'm tired of is people telling me that it is my fault that the students aren't motivated, that it is the teacher's responsibility that the students aren't motivated. This is really a bunch of crap. I understand that a teacher must try to present the material in a way that is both relevant and interesting to a student, but if the students really could not care less, what is a teacher to do???

People have told me that I need to get all "Coach Carter" and "Stand and Deliver" on these kids and have high expectations for them, and then I will get results. I truly don't believe this works in all cases. I have yet to meet a teacher that didn't care about his/her students. I have may many many teachers that care a great deal about their students achievements, and yet their students are not excelling in the their studies. Why is this? In my opinion, the problem is motivation. A teacher can only go so far with presenting material and setting tough standards, if the students do not care enough to put forth any effort, there’s not you can do. The point is, that while Coach Carter and Jamie Escalante were great teachers and did wonderful things, if all it took was determination and caring on the part of the teacher, we'd have so many successes that the stories of these two men would be par for the course.

For example, in my class, I have a policy that if you have had and unexcused absence, you may not make up any test or quizzes that you missed on your "skip" day. Now this is not the strictest of rules, but this rule boggles the minds of my students. I actually had one of them ask me, "don't you care if I fail or not?" to which I answered, "of course I care, and I also care if you show up for the test." It seems as if the students expect that teachers will bend over backwards to get them to pass, and if I try to implement classroom policies that stress student involvement in their grades, they feel I'm punishing them, and making school overly hard for them.
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8,154 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think you have an excellent point here. My experience has only been in teaching college students, whom you might think would be mroe motivated since the don't "have" to be there and it costs money. Not so! They are often shocked when they are penalized for turning work in late (even though they were told in advance there would be a penalty). Many of the questions asked on the first day of class can be boiled down to "how much work do I actually have to do to pass this class"? Education is only as good as the mind of the student. It's a two way street. You do the best you can, and they should do the best they can.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
They are often shocked when they are penalized for turning work in late


I would use that policy, but that would mean my students would have ot turn in homework.
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
I ran across this while searching for a reference on Jamie Escalante, and it reminded me of something I just read: Link

Here's an excerpt:

My dad sent me an issue of Educational Leadership which is all about urban schools. The first article describes a study in which they found that there are three groups of teachers in struggling urban schools - those who blame the children for not keeping up their end of the bargain, those who blame the children's families for the same, and those who don't blame anyone but simply do not allow any children to fail - not by lowering standards, but by showing the children they care, by pushing them to keep working until they meet the teacher's standards for good work, by being there again and again and again. They found that the teachers in the third group often achieved remarkable success with their students, and they found two schools that cultivate that attitude among all the adults in the building, and these two schools are far more successful on tests and the like than one would expect based on results from schools serving a similar population.