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Home : 2002 : April : 1
I agree with you, Anne, that ideally students' motivation should be intristic, but I am unsure how to develop this in my students. As I mentioned earlier, I have only been teaching for a little over a month, so I admit that I might not be the most knowledgeable. I thought, if my students could be motivated by extresic rewards, but then have the opportunity to experience success, maybe the intristic motivation will develop & in time they will be acting less for the reward & more for the personal satisfaction of being successful. Is this naive of me to think this way? Please, if you can give me any tips on a better way to develop intristic motivation, I would really appreciate it. I will read the book you suggested to see if that gives me any ideas, also. Why the heck do I have fun friday? I chose to use Fun Friday in my classroom is because that is what the students decided they would like for their reward. I do try to work "with" the children, as you suggested, when I develop my classroom management plan, and I try to give them as much say in the plan as possible so they feel some sense of ownership in the classroom. We agreed that for approximately an hour every Friday, they would have an hour of free time and will have a chance to explore things they might not be able to explore during "regular" classtime. I have seen many wonderful things coming out of the fun friday experience (singing and dancing competions, beautiful artwork, students playing "teacher" and write lessons on the board, etc.) and, even with the situation that happened, I still believe it is a positive experience for the majority of the class and plan to keep it for my classroom. I also wanted to make the point that many of the posts might have seemed so negative because they were specifically responding to my request for ideas for punishiment, which is in itself a "negative" topic. As I mentioned, I DID meet with the students and parents (the administration in my school doesn't meet with us regarding things like this. They feel teachers should be "on their own"), but neither the parents nor the students had any ideas about what to do to punish them. That's why I came on this board - to get specific ideas for punishments. I can see your point about the one comment you mentioned, but it seems to me that much of the rest were filled with valid, helpful practical suggestions for me to use for that particular situation. If I would have asked for overall classroom management plans, or ideas on how to reach at-risk students, I'm sure we would have had a different, more positive responses. Thank you for responding, Anne. Although we might have a difference of opinion, I do respect what you are saying and you've made some good, valid points. Although our philosophies may differ, you seem to really care about your students, and I think that, more than anything, is the indication of a good teacher. Best wishes.
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