I wish I had a magic wand. I could wave it to motivate students to do what I want. So that doesn't work so I need to do something else.
I asked David to have a conference call with two of my students to help motivate them to work harder and finish their project. It worked for a little while but didn't last.
Another thing I have thought about doing was having less motivated students to be partnered with more motivated students.
I need to give these students more time but that is hard where so many students need help. One thing I though of was to make their assignments shorter to achieve success.
I will be trying these things but if anyone comes across a magic wand please share it with me.
4 comments:
Denise,
First off, I wanted to let you know that your comments on my students' blogs and wikis has been very inspirational and has lead to lots of motivation within my classroom. Thank You!
I can't think of any "magic wands" per say. However, I think having the less motivated students partnered with more highly motivated students can potentially be a good idea.
Do you know about the 80/20 rule of leadership? Basically it says that in any group 20% will be leaders and 80% will be followers. Broken down further, half the leaders will be positive (upward leaders) and half will be negative (downward leaders).
The upward leaders will generally be more motivated and interested in self betterment as well as the improvement of the whole group.
The downward leaders will usually be less motivated and more interested in instant gratification and cheap thrills as opposed to long term satisfaction.
Both types of leaders can be charismatic and both have the potential to carry followers with them. However, the negative leaders have the advantage in that the products they promise are more easily attainable and may seem like more fun for less work at the moment.
On the other hand, the positive leaders may struggle to gather followers because their path requires work and personal investment to strive for a longer term goal.
In order to level the playing field, it may be necessary to identify and eliminate the negative leaders from the group.
It can seem unfair to not allow certain students to participate. And sometimes I find myself thinking "maybe this could be the class that saves this kid". To some extent, we all want to save the student who seems to be falling through the cracks. But if they are actively climbing downward through cracks that they have created, while other students are eager to be led to a higher level, at some point we have to let that kid go (before he drags others into that crack with him).
Ultimately, if we are able to create an environment where the positive leaders are prominent, the followers will all rise to a higher level. This can lead to significant positive peer pressure and a great environment for motivation!
From what I know about you, you probably already do this stuff. But I started responding and just couldn't stop typing.
Thanks for everything you've done for me and my students.
Sorry that was such a long post...
That is okay. I always enjoy reading what you have to say.
Sorry, I can't remember where my wand is as an old teacher I have C.R.A.F.T
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