As a teacher, I am constantly trying to work on motivating my students. I try to come up with any idea I can that might cause just one student to take their studies seriously, and to see that the more they learn the better off they will be.
I am working with a small group of middle school students right now, and they are very unmotivated. I have developed the curriculum around their interests. I have made it very hands on. I encourage the use of our technology. I still don’t see the any lightbulbs turning on!
I would appreciate any suggestions, of even personal stories you could share about what motivated you to work hard as a student and to realize that your schooling was important.
Unfortunately I was motivated by fear. Anything below a B was considered and treated as if I had failed the class.
I will say the best teachers I had were the ones who treated me like a person and not a number. I still keep in touch off and on with a few of the ones I was closest too (like my 4th grade teacher.)
One thing that a really helped motivate classes was contests. We did state capitals for instance… and we had tournaments with other classes and the winners got a free period or some other simple prize. We did math drills this way and a lot of other things that required the usual boring rote memorization.
Anything that got us out of a classroom for a day was worth the extra effort we needed to expend.
Good luck though, I tutored middle school kids a couple of years ago when everyone was busy failing the MCAS exam and those kids were sure a cynical, rude lot!
Are you a new teacher?
Motivation has been a problem for - well, forever.
If there were a simple solution, you wouldn’t have to ask this question.
A few thoughts:
Some classes are simply more motivated than others. No reason. Simply the right mix of the right students at the right time. When this happens, enjoy. Don’t try to duplicate it…it’s a happy fluke.
You seem like you are at least giving some effort. Good. Although it might not look like it, students notice and apprecitate it.
My own personal motivation growing up as a kid was to get the hell out of Dodge. I came from a small town and hated it from birth on. Always wanted to travel. So getting students interested in travel and foreign countries might be an option. Maybe pick a country a week - show some travel video, do some research on the country, find an internet pal in that country, open the world to these kids and show them that the universe does not revolve around them.
Good luck and on behalf of more people than you might imagine, THANK YOU! Thank you for caring, thank you for trying, and thank you for putting up with an almost impossible chore of educating on a shoestring budget!
Get involved with them. Make projects fun. Also, Give them something to look forward to at the end of a week or marking period if they, on a majority, work hard and get good grades. I know that some people will say that’s wrong to do for whatever reason, but I think it will teach them that hard work reaps good rewards (most of the time). You could try to stress to them that by not being motivated, they are only hurting themselves, which could backfire. But stress how it hurts and why they don’t want that stuff to happen. one of my cents.
Grades were always an important part of my self-image. I was a huge geek, who actually liked learning new stuff, so I got good grades. This won me approval from my parents and teachers and respect from my peers, so I got more good grades. This got me approval…you can guess how this goes.
My family and my friends always treated education as though it was important. It wasn’t “Are you going to go to college?” It was “Where are you going to go to college?” On the occassions when I had trouble with a topic, my parents would make a big deal about it and then help me out. There was never any question of my brother and I pursuing goals that didn’t include education.
In high school, I needed good grades to go to college, and in college, I needed good grades to go to grad school. I don’t know how well that would work with middle schoolers, though.
I was motivated by competition. I hate coming in any spot besides first and I can turn pretty much anything into a competition to feed that need. So, getting good grades and doing good work became a competition to me.
Good luck and on behalf of more people than you might imagine, THANK YOU! Thank you for caring, thank you for trying, and thank you for putting up with an almost impossible chore of educating on a shoestring budget! **
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Dmark,
Thanks. I have taught only a couple of years and still want to learn as much as I can. Thank you all for your suggestions so far. I do use games(competitive) and try to reward kids for their progress. I promised these kids if they all passed (c or better) a quiz they took today, that I would take them for Ice Cream after we were done. 2 out of 5 failed. I get frustrated sometimes, but want to look for new ways I might not have thought of.
By the way, most of these kids don’t have the best home situations. They probably recieve little or no support at home. I don’t think they have much hope for the future, which gives them little reason to try getting math homework done, or what have you.
School was a waste of time for me. I coasted through without ever picking up a book and still graduated with honours. I could breeze through and I knew it.
Looking back that was a little short sighted, but that’s a decision I made.
Are you working with gifted kids? Maybe they’re bored.
Heh, competition always made my ability to function in class become nonexistant! I was miserable during those situations.
I found myself most motivated when I felt the teacher was teaching beyond the ideologies of my little home town, showing us what was beyond the borders of our village, or state, or country. When that happened, I’d feel more compelled to seek out more information on my own time.
I’m not sure if that helps much, though. Good luck.
Really though, I hated school, I hated the people and the material was never challenging enough. I had a few favorite teachers though, but generally disliked school, and nobody could change my mind about it, although I did pretty well in school, for having not pay any attention!
Forgot to add, I really enjoyed discussions and structured debates. Of course, that is not always possible with some classes. The teacher who put these on for us swore he never would again after our grade graduated. He thought kids were just getting too immature to put these on.
Anecdotale story that may shed some light on your situation.
I’m an instructor at the collegiate level, so I’m not used to dealing with the little buggers you are. But I am also an Environmental Psychologist. Therefore I study humans with-in their habitat’s work space, and even learning space. We (my environmental psych class) recently participated in a study at a middle school here in town. We re-arranged the class rooms for a cross section of grades. 5,6,7,8. Essentially we were looking at spacially orienting the classes to increase motivation, socialization, productivity.
We found that circular classroom set-ups where the desk’s were set up in a circle or semi-circle around the teacher/ chalk board increased childrens motivation by a remarkable margin.
When kids are learning and not fooling around they are naturally going to do pretty well. When children are sitting all side by side around a circle they can see everyone, including you, at all times. the center of attention is not drawn only to the kids at the front of the class because they are all at the front of the class in this design.
Walls: Walls were adorned with landscapes and color’s not charts and tables. Kids were drawn to the color, and the landscapes which stimulated certain children to pay attention to the teacher rather than reading a wall.
Results varied by grade, those most affected were 6,7,8.
BTW. one of my classrooms right now that I teach is is set up in a circle. And each year we ask students to participate in a blind experiment where we monitor their attention, and grades…fascinating results. I hope to Publish them sometime in the next several years when the 10 year study mark is hit.
Sounds like you’re probably facing an uphill battle if the kids aren’t getting the message that school is important at home. However, one thing that may help (if you aren’t already doing it) is to vary the classroom routines and types of activities – e.g. doing a mixture of collaborative and competitive projects, presenting information visually as well as verbally, etc. Changes of pace tend to wake students up, and besides, it’s a good idea to target students with different learning styles at least some of the time.
Like the poster above, the Lack of An A in a class was considered a cardinal offense, and caused… untold chaos and problems at home. The fear of the punishment from my dad… or even worse… The Look from my mom.
Secondly… A major motivating factor was that I wanted to learn! I hated not knowing things, or the reasons behind things working. All it would take was a teacher saying something like… “but you don’t need to know how that works, only that it works” to send me off to the library (yes, pre-internet) to figure out exactly why air pressure varied according to heat.
(side point – its also how my mom taught me to read. She’d only read HALF of the Richie Rich comic book, then get “too busy” to finish the rest. I hated unfinished stories, so I taught myself how to read to finish them).
Being thrown into the middle of people who know things I don’t, has always motivated me to go learn those things. This is motivated by my fear of incompetancy and social phobia, though. Not a universal answer.
I find my staff are motivated by 3 things.
Money
Recognition
The idea that they are doing something good and worthwhile.
Give them lots of praise, and do it in front of others as well as alone. Everyone likes to think they are doing a good job and are recognised for it.
It’s an old idea but a thankyou goes a long way!
Rather than tell them things will be useful in later life, show them how it will be useful NOW! How many times did I say, “when will I ever use this when I grow up?”
If all else fails… give them money! Or something similar. Winning things like early marks, credits for things, small cheap prizes. Find out whats popular with them, like certain cards or games, and give them some when they achieve. Little competitions where they walk away with something works for adults why would it be any different for kids. Make them long term prizes. Not daily ones, but ones that add up over a couple of weeks. Then even if someone has a bad day they still have a chance to win later.
I always did well and gave 100% in a class where I liked the teacher. Eye contact, smiles, attention, dignifying my answers, specific feedback so that I respected their opinion, because I knew they had actually read and thought about my work.
Time taken to talk to me… and a cute arse didn’t hurt!!
Everyone liked a ‘cool’ teacher. I know it’s superficial, but dress cool, have a cool hairstyle, groovy shoes. If you’re school lets you, wear jeans etc. How they dress is important to kids, they notice clothes on each other. Get funky yourself!
These kids are in summer school because they have not met certain academic criteria.
Thanks for the tip, I can do this with this group. Not enough room with my regular classes though.
I normally teach math only. For the summer school session I teach all major subect areas. I concentrate mostly on reading, that is their weakest subject by far. The material I teach is challenging, but not out of thier reach. We work a lot on vocabulary and I added greek and latin roots this year to help out.
My students think I’m cool (I think). You can checkout the website they have devoted to me if you want (Funny stuff).here
Thanks again to everyone for their help. It is very cool that you have taken the time to help me out.
Do you know these students? More than half have learning disabilities. All of them except for one come from broken homes. I don’t think boredom is the issue at all. These kids don’t see much hope for their future, which is why I am attempting to find a way to motivate them. I am sorry that you didn’t have a positive experience with school, but that doesn’t mean that every struggling student is struggling for the same reasons that you did.
If you would like to explain to me how you feel I should make these kids more interested and less bored, as you claim, then I will be more than willing to listen. If all you want to do is throw stones at the educational system, I can do without your comments.