Motivation

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Home : 2002 : September : 9

Motivation
By I agree!

I went to a conference once on "How to Motivate Your Students" where the presenter, Spence Rogers announced at the very beginning, "You came here to find out how to motivate your students, right?" We all answered, "Right!"
And he responded, "Well, you can't!" He said this because he said that motivation comes from within and cannot be created by someone else from without. Then he went on to say basically the same thing as Glasser. All we can do as teachers is create an atmosphere that is conducive to bringing our students' motivation to the surface. We do that by making learning fun, allowing choice

-- freedom and power, and by providing that love and acceptance that brings about happiness.

The most valuable and useful thing I learned from Rogers is to use music to change kids' moods. Here's how he said to choose the music. It has to be the students' music (not classical) evoking positive memories/feelings, the lyrics have to be appropriate (this is the killer), and the teacher has to be able to tolerate it!!!!! I play N-SYNC for clean-up, and a Shrek soundtrack, Kidz Bop, and/or Soul Music for Kids for breaks between subjects. It's great to see the kids bop around the room singing and cleaning up at the same time. I tell them they have until the music stops to be back in their seats and ready to listen for instruction. By the time the music starts they are feelin' good and ready to go on the next task.