Liliana Bermejo
Student Motivation Reflection
One of the most important and difficult components to teaching, and education overall, that I have learned this year is student motivation. Although you cannot force a student to learn, or to actively engage in the lesson and/or their work, there are certain things teachers can do to enhance student’s motivation to learn. Personally, as someone who never struggled with motivation in school growing up, and completed all the work regardless of the type of work assigned, I had to get accustomed to seeing students who lacked motivation or needed motivationtechniques. In my practicum setting, I have observed a variety of motivation techniques, some more effective than others.
Thus far, some motivation techniques I have observed teachers use are, trying to motivate students by threatening to lower their grade, creating activities and lessons that are realistic and relatable to students, and lack of motivation techniques. Clearly some of these techniques are more effective than others. Trying to motivate students by threatening to lower their grade is not effective; students often shrug and refuse to do work. Not having a motivation technique is not effective as well; students take the lack of motivation and encourage from the teacher as teachers lack of care for their learning. However, using activities and lessons that engage students, as well as creating authentic, realistic and relatable activities, has proven to be effective. For example, at the beginning of the year, my cooperating teacher created an activity where students had to determine if the following items placed around their tables: an rotten apple, a sharpened pencil, a rusted nail, a ripped paper and others, underwent chemical or physical changes. Throughout the lesson students were engaged and asking several question whether certain things they had seen previously were physical and chemical changes. Such lesson encouraged students to see the real life application of the lesson, which motivated them to participate and partake in the learning.
In order to truly understand how to motivate students in my practicum, I asked two students what would increase their motivation to learn in a lesson. After hearing their responses, I came to the realization that there are definitely ways their suggestions can be incorporated into my practice. One of the students explained that knowing he will be able to create a poster, or use crafts to create a project based on what he learned in class, would motivate him to learn. Another student shared thathearing and seeing examples in videos, or pictures, motivates her to learn since she sees that what she is learning is important and affects her everyday life. As a teacher who is constantly reflecting on her practice, I can and will definitely incorporate their suggestions into my lesson plans, during instruction, practice activities, homework or final projects.