Saturday, August 28, 2010

Motivated Students

I found a nice article on the blog scottaaronson.com.

The writer (Scott, I presume) addresses the challenges student motivation.

Scott makes a couple of observations that made me nod my head in agreement.

For one thing, the introduction of grades and assessment into a learning milieu immediately complicates the situation and disrupts the natural curiosity of the learners.  Scott advises teachers to grade generously.  I concur.

Secondly, Scott reminds his readers that a classroom is composed of unique personalities.  It is inevitable that some students will not be interested in learning the subject material; often, they will make it clear that they do not want to be in school.  The teacher should not then be dismissive of the whole group.  Sometimes, I fall into this trap.  If one or two students gives me difficulty, then I feel discouraged by the entire class.  I must remind myself that each student is an individual.  As Scott suggests: focus on the good students and not on the bad ones.

Photo by bernat…

0 comments:

Post a Comment