Lack of Motivation? And Whose Fault is it?
As future teachers, we have enough to worry about with learning the content area of our majors and the methods for teaching them. Now, factor in the question "How do I motivate my students to do the work?" Now there's a real challenge.
After reading the chapter " 'Struggling' Adolescents' Engagement in Multimediating: Countering the Institutional Construction of Incompetence," by David O'Brien I no longer feel quite so overwhelmed trying to answer the question above. Furthermore, I feel that the suggestions that O'Brien provides are feasible, that is, they can be applied to any classroom, in any demographic, and in any content area.
The advice that O'Brien provides is simple: "When students perceived that they were successful, they could set personally relevant goals and see that they were improving, they would read and write more, build fluency, and decide to persevere, even on tasks that they perceived as being difficult."
Anyone can understand the reasons for truth in this statement. Think back to projects that you have worked on throughout the years of your education. Did you enjoy projects more when you could "figure it out" on your own? When you could use methods that you enjoyed? I can recall doing a project in my 10th grade history class on Egyptian Civilizations. Since I loved to cook, I decided to make a lentil bean soup as similar to the Egyptian method as possible. This project is memorable to me because I could do what I wanted to.
While this article was supportive, I found myself becoming a bit angry- I began thinking of high school dropouts, those who are labeled "remedial" and those who simply haven't found their niche for learning. It occurred to me that (probably) a huge percentage of these students are just as able as those who graduate, or who take AP courses, or who know what they love to learn. It's the teachers that are making these students fail by applying the "One Size Fits All" approach to education. This approach does not work (unless the students are actually robots).
The "One Size Fits All" approach is best linked to what O'Brien tells us on page 35 as autonomous literacy, or an "absolute set of skills one is supposed to attain; the skills are assessed statistically and linked to technical and economic consequences. So, there you have it... society feels that there are certain benchmarks that a person is expected to reach with regard to education and literacy, and the belief is that if a person hasn't met these benchmarks, then he or he is "remedial." In essence, teachers who adhere to this belief are setting their students up for failure. How nice.
Personally, I like the idea of coaching students towards setting and attaining their own goals. After all, isn't one of the major principles of high school "individuality"?
4 comments:
Good Thinking Megan. The issue I have of course is that the label "remedial" is applied when a student does not master (or take an interest in mastering in many cases) a narrow range of school sanctioned literacy practices.
Impossible, then, to even know the range of talent learners possess when the notion of what constitutes literacy is so narrow. Note the points Kajder makes as well in her chapters from "Bringing the Outside In."
Self-exploration is really what we're trying to do. I loved your end point when you said that we're trying to guide students towards individuality, because that is essentially what students want and need. Our job is to guide them there, or as you say, coach them there. They definitely need to be individuals and free thinkers.
Jami
The key is defffffinitely getting a student/students to believe that they are capable of being successful..because afterall, THEY ARE! Any student and ALL students!
I talked about this point in my blog and related it to my brother. Check it out if you want.
You raise some great points Megan. I agree that students need to be able to do self-exploration so that they can become free thinkers and take on their own individuality.
What your whole thought process reminds me of is the need for teachers to remember that all students have a different kind of learning style -- in this instance we could learn a lot if we look at students with learning disabilities. It is because of their disabilities that they are forced to learn another way of approaching learning. This style is not always accomadated by teachers in the classroom and thus the student is deemed, as you put it in your blog, "remedial". I realize that learning about different learning styles is, yet another, challenge for us as up and coming teachers, but it is a challenge that we would do well to heed.
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