Motivation Conversations

This blog is come of my additions to conversations that I have been reading in the blogosphere regarding my inquiry…

…Recognizing how to foster what student’s naturally want to do and think will get you ahead in the classroom.  Realizing that there is so much going on in their minds already and using that to get somewhere, rather than trying to redirect their minds somewhere they are not ready to go is something I am going to be working on this upcoming school year. 

…Celebrating students’ failures and helping them see how they can learn from them seems to be this amazing idea that celebrates the fact of being human in general.  Giving students the example of actually failing and falling, not telling them that failing is bad and is unacceptable.  Giving them the opportunity to fail and then succeed by learning from that failure is so important.  This seems to be something many teachers forget.  In the real world, you do get second chances and opportunity to make up for mistakes you make.  Giving them chances and choices helps them succeed even after they leave your classroom.  If they only get one chance to show what they know and they don’t do well, how the hell are they ever supposed to grow?

…Modeling behavior that you want to transfer to your students is so important.  Owning mistakes and explaining to students how you got yourself out of them or moved forward from them will help them see that making mistakes is a part of human nature.  This works much better than just telling them that it is ok to make mistakes.  Model the behaviors yourself. 

…I love the idea of actually teaching students how their brains work and ways to get the most of what they have (literally what they have in their skull).  Teaching them that if they use their brains in specific ways, just like if they use their bodies in exercise, their brain will grow; not in size, but in knowledge.  They will literally get smarter.  Fostering that love of learning, is something that can be put on the back burner, but is one of the most important parts of education.  This sounds funny, but really diving into what happens to your brain literally when you succeed, or when you fail and how you react to it.  I like the idea of helping them understand the options they have for reacting and how which one they choose affects their brains differently.  I helped teach a course on anti-bullying practices and a large part of this course was teaching kids about what happens in the brain.  What chemicals are released when and what they do to how you think.  There were supplementary videos that went along with the program.  There was a brain that sang and talked about the different parts of it.  It sounds really weird, but it got the students attention.  It made them laugh, made them interested, and helped them remember that these things were going on in their own brain.