For those of you who are not as yet expert in the task of either home schooling your child or tutoring the child in school work, or for teachers just looking to refresh their daily routine, these tips, which will appear about once a month, are intended to enhance teaching skills and direct the learners towards success in learning, which is, after all, the whole point. Here is the tip for NOVEMBER

MOTIVATION:

MOTIVATION
It would be simplistic to imply that all disciplinary problems in our schools today can be attributed to student boredom. Some students have personal and social problems far beyond the ken of the school. However, the old adage, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” is alive in well in our schools. Much of what is considered basic curriculum today has no attraction for students. In fact, it would seem they hit the boredom wall earlier and earlier as the years go by. What “we” mandate they should learn is a complex problem we’ll leave for another day, but the essence of it is that we mandate it and students have very little choice.
But, comes the cry, what we mandate is good for them! Not if they have no interest in it! That is not wild liberalism run amok. That is simply the human race. We human beings, even we wise, adult human beings, tend to learn what we like to learn. We rarely learn what we hate to learn. A strong argument can be made that the affective taxonomy (building an attitude of wanting to learn) must first be established before the cognitive taxonomy (building a store of specific knowledge) can be successful. Why do more women not learn enthusiastically all they can about tractor pulls? Why do more people not fight for tickets to the ballet? Why are some people even now in the 21st century stubbornly proud to be “computer illiterate?” Simply because, as adults free to choose, we don’t try to learn what we don’t like or don’t feel we need.
Students are also human beings. Learning happens only for those students motivated to learn for some purpose of their own. Human beings cannot be “motivated” from without. Prodded, pressured, punished perhaps, but not “motivated.” Motivation comes from within, from self-interest, be it for enterprise, enjoyment, or entertainment. Wall Street admen know that very well. Their business is to tap into our desires and link them to a product. Sexual irresistibility, wealth and the good life, popularity and success, a secure future for our families. These visions will produce motivation from within. Without that motivation, there are no sales.
Without that motivation, there is also no learning. In the majority of high school students, our curriculum ignites precious few sparkling visions of enterprise, enjoyment or entertainment, much less prosperity and partners a-plenty. Yet students like to learn. Even many animals like to learn. Young chimpanzees will learn tricks without banana rewards. Why wouldn't young humans also like to learn? They do.
Moreover, having human brains, they know instinctively whether or not they are learning. They distinguish, some consciously, others unconsciously, between rote repetition and real learning. One 8th grade remedial student in Florida objected to the Language Arts workbook. "It's nothing but busy work." He was right.
In a foreign language technique experiment that the author conducted in four high schools, students were randomly divided into control and experimental groups by "halving" the class roll. The questions for response (in the language, of course) were mixed but the teacher controlled who was called on to answer what. One student finally and with some hostility confronted his teacher asking, "Why don't you ever call on me for any of the fun questions?" Poor chap, he was in the control group.
One 8th grader in a rural middle school, where the state was testing a new South Carolina History manuscript and soliciting student reactions, criticized one of the activities: making a report on a (colonial period) king or queen. “Some people," explained the young man, "will just copy from the Encyclopedia and that’s just Level 1 Bloom.” No, his mother was not a teacher and yes, his classmates agreed. And yes, we deleted that activity.
In a different South Carolina middle school we were testing out and televising "live" responses using our newly developed thinking skills construct, presenting in the four "basic" areas (English, Math, Social Studies, Science) activities that required some type of thinking skill such as deduction or concept formation. One of the Social Studies teachers was actually the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction who asked to be included. But, feeling a certain peer pressure to insure a good performance, she prepped her students the day before by conducting the activity. As we learned later, it went really well. But when we arrived with the camera crew and students were routed back through the same lesson, it was a total failure. They knew they weren't learning. They were regurgitating. We provided a different lesson but similarly structured, and the next day re-did the Social Studies. Yes, it went very well. Students were lively and involved and retention tested out well.
Students like real learning, but they know the difference between learning and learning to mimic, between using their brain and putting it on auto-pilot. . It is disheartening to visit class after class on an accreditation team and see that students spend an entire period without once having to engage their minds. So it should surprise no one that students lack enthusiasm as they are herded through our idea of a curriculum that is “good for them.” On the contrary, we should be pleasantly surprised that some actually give it a spirited try.
The point for anyone preparing tomorrow’s lessons: Make it personal. Consider what it is you want the student to learn and find some reason why it is in the student’s interest to bother. Your saying so is not enough. Your making it relevant to something the student already knows (such as concepts the student already has) is one approach. Your creating a problem to be solved – we humans like solving problems – is another. Your turning it into a game to be won is another. Occasionally even an extrinsic reward, while not recommended as a frequent tactic, does work. I knew one principal of a large, very mixed middle school, who decided to teach math classes himself in the auditorium once a week. He did not claim to be a great math teacher (his field was actually Social Studies) but there were prizes for doing especially well – pencils, paper, small gimmicks. Then rewards were offered for the class performing best on the upcoming Basic Skills test – a pizza party was Grand Prize. The experience of the principal’s math classes was new, it was different, it had peer pressure to do well, and when the sessions were done, the Basic Skills test average score for math had gone up 20 points.
Education is personal. Motivation is personal. That is an advantage that home schooling has over classroom schooling – it is easier to tap into the “personal” without which there will be no motivation and not nearly as much learning as there could be. And not nearly the satisfaction you, the teacher, could have because all of us who teach find our real gratification in seeing the lights go on in those brains looking back at us. Personal, that is the watchword for the teacher who knows how to motivate.

Comments or questions?
Just e-mail me at Isabel