Motivation

What motivates you? It's something that, I think some people don't really think about. I know I usually don't, though a very large deadline looming ahead seems to always do the trick. But, is that really a motivator we should be depending upon? School gives up a set of deadlines, the consequences being failure and the rewards being good grades. We motivate ourselves mainly, with the idea that we want to avoid the consequences. We want to do good, or, we need to do good if we want to get into something else. That doesn't always work. And it doesn't feel as good. It's the difference between performance and mastery. One is rewarding, the other other, is simply a goal to achieve.

If I am going to be honest, I need to set a goal for myself. I need to be more motivated to get things done ahead of time, to beat my horrible tendency to procrastinate (getting started is half the job). I need to motivate myself, to do better than what I've been depending on before. Yes, I have through the graces that shouldn't be so lenient, had little consequences for my procrastination, and have met my performance orientation needs to motivation. I've gotten my marks, I've handing things in on time. But...I've mastered nothing. If I am smart, I can only image how truly intelligent I would be if I gave myself the opportunity, the time, the practice, that comes with spanning things out and working on them throughout a long set of time. That is what I want to master, my own ability to take control of my learning and responsibilities, instead of waiting until my time is running out before paying attention to them.

The reward for my motivation, I can see it clearly. Less stress and a feeling that I am in control of myself. Those are rewards outweigh any mark that I could get, even though they may lead to more success. Dan Pink, in his TED video, talking about the kind of motivation that people need. He talked about how rewards can often sidetrack true motivation. If that is true in a business model, it would also be true in kids. Gold stars, toys, even grades...are these rewards helping kids, or are we narrowing their creative abilities.

It would be almost impossible to give children 20% of free work time a day. It's hard enough to fit in physical education around all of the educational requirements that must be made. But maybe, we should be motivating them with the opportunity to do better. We should be giving kids more chance to show their own talents. Maybe we can have assignments that are due sometime during the year, give them more freedom to decide what kind of way they are going to show their knowledge. It could play in with differentiating instruction, to see what kids can produce when there is less of a constraint placed upon them. The idea is unrefined, and I do worry about how children would react to a system like that. Maybe it should be restricted to a business scenario. Maybe a classroom should stick with their motivations of grades, and try to raise children up to a general interest in mastering the content. Some of these things I can only assume about, until I get a chance to dive in headfirst with the concepts.

But...I can see the idea of pushing kids towards the higher levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Deficiency needs are things that kids need to develop, but if the higher into the growth needs they can go, the more they have actually achieved.



It may not be easy, or even possible for teachers to take children's minds to the level of self-transcendence. That seems like something that needs to be an actual step that a child takes through meta-cognition, an active choice to push themselves on to a higher level. But...if we expect children to self actualize, then we are using Vygotsky's theory of scaffolding to raise them up to that level. Kids won't go beyond what we think of them. If we expect them to be the very best that they can be, and strive for only that, then kids will begin to see that as a possibility. There is nothing worse than a child who is lead to believe by their instructors that they are unable of reaching certain goals. Perhaps our greatest tool of motivation is that; an expectation that they will reach those higher limits.

Working together

One of the things that I have come to relate to very strongly in this class, is the idea of student centred learning. My mind slowly started creating my ideal classroom, how I would want to run things when I am a teacher. And one of the things that has always interested me was the idea of group learning. I stumbled upon the Sugatra Mirtra video earlier on in the semester, and it really inspired me. Kids have an incredibly thirst for knowledge, and they can adapt themselves to any situation and method of learning. Why are we not harnessing this, and allowing them to develop their own knowledge, with only the helping hands and instruction needed to start them.

I tie the group learning in with student centred learning, Gardener's multiple intelligence, differentiating instruction, and Vygotsky. All of these processes to me, concreted my belief that I want to push for children working in more of a group setting. Yes, there could be problems with plagiarizing, or kids passing on their responsibilities to the group, but that is a very individualistic viewpoint. Maybe the other cultures have it correct; maybe we should start to turn our viewpoint into one of a community, and promote collaboration and the self and peer guiding that can happen when two minds come together to work on something.

Looking back on my own education, I won't lie, I could have used a lot more group work. All of my report cards said that Brittany needs to learn to work better with others, Brittany needs to learn to share responsibilities instead of doing things by herself. And they were right. By focusing so much on myself, I took on a lot of pressure, and I often times can remember shutting out possibly amazing ideas simply because I refused that anyone could do something as good as I could. What does that kind of viewpoint do for the world? Yes, we want to increase a child's intelligence, their strengths, and make them self sufficient people. So while there is time for kids to work on their own, I think that there is a vast, incredibly source to be used by allowing children the chance to help each other. Push boundaries by having them support each other, be introduced to new viewpoints, use their own curiosities to motivate each other.

Group learning has so many benefits, socially and mentally, that I think is lost in a class where kids sit in individual roles and listen to the teacher. Even if the teacher is trained, motivated, and interested in getting children to learn, there is a severe underestimating of exactly what a child can do. Give them the reigns, some power, and see what they can do. The purpose of a teacher is to help lead them to this amazing world of knowledge, but once they're out of the doors, we can't do that anymore. If we can help push them to look for themselves, to talk with others, to brainstorm ideas and actively take part in things, then we're teaching them more than arithmetic and reading. Those are skills that will benefit a child in any situation at life. And there is a disservice done to children who are boxed in to the idea of only one way to learn, or who feel inactive in their own education.

How do our Brains work?

How could anyone not be amazed at the understanding we have begun to get of our own mind. Through all of the scientific breakthroughs and discoveries that have, I think teachers today are much better equipped at understanding exactly what may be happening inside the minds of the children we are trying to teach. And with that knowledge, maybe we can begin to be a lot more prepared on how to help them achieve their maximum potential.

I can distinctively remember staring down at a list of pre-human ancestors, their Latin names and approximated time of existence seeming a daunting mountain of information. There are times in our schooling when we've had to try to feed our brains a lot of knowledge, where small details and precise data is truly important. Memory, and our ability to master it, is something that everyone needs. In fact, some people can simply be smart with very little effort because they are born with a natural ability to just pick things up and remember them. My mother mentioned a girl who slept during class, but seemed to absorb the information while she slept on her textbooks. She had a photographing memory, and there was very little she could not remember, whether it be a paragraph in text books, or a complete list of dates.

Andy Bell, however, is a man that proves that it isn't always the natural ability that can help us. His technique for memorizing anything, even ten full decks of shuffled cards, is one that does not depend upon your IQ, but on your plan. The true brilliance of that, is that as teachers, we can pass things like this on to our students. Especially in younger years, the earlier we introduce them to these strong concepts that can bring out the best in their brains internal workings, the better they will be able to adapt them into their brains hardware. It's in a post secondary classroom that we're taught about reading strategies, and go over systems of memory encoding, storage, and retrieval, but I would like to find ways to get these into kids subconsciously. I don't think a grade three class could follow this curriculum yet, but they can certainly be guided to use good techniques to make sure that they are storing things in their long term memory banks.

Looking at the five types of encoding in memory we went over, rehearsal, deep processing, elaboration, constructing images, and organization, there are things in each that I want to use as a way to direct class discussions. Make it something that we start off as doing as an in class assignment, thinking deeply, associating the information, helping them relate it to a jingle or by relating the information to looking at your hands while you concentrate on it. Getting those things hardwired into us, having them start that young, is opening the doors for them to adopt those techniques themselves .Eventually, if kids find that these steps help them, it becomes part of their schema, the tools that they learn to depend upon to help them achieve better mental success.

The brain is a powerful tool, and children have the amazing ability to twist and shape theirs much more freely than we do now. If I could help some kid realize a little helpful hint that much earlier, it would be an accomplishment I wish I had learned.