MOTIVATION!!!!
focus, accomplish, excel
Life for me is a series of goals. In general, I rarely have problems with intrinsic motivation. I am driven and push myself hard, especially in the things that matter to me: my family, career, creative works, relationships, learning, community involvement, and the list goes on. But then there are the things that I have no desire to do, like currently organize my garage. So what motivates me?
Personally, the Goal Theory is most applicable. I set short and long term goals regularly, working hard to achieve them. However, when it comes to my students, their response often is, "Goal?! Forget that!" This attitude is one that is very challenging for me as an educator and life-long learning to not only understand but also overcome. Ways that I have found to be successful so far were some of the ones that we discussed in class.
Bringing in elements of play have been a great way to engage my students in the task at hand. Whether it is using "fun" technology for projects, like iPads and the Smartboard, or bringing in materials, activities, or ideas that are unexpected, my students seem to enjoy in this simple motivational strategy. Another approach that has been successful is using students' personal interest to motivate them. I bring in subjects and aspects that are relevant, whether broadly to popular culture or personally to their own lives and experiences. Involving aspects of fantasy with their art projects has also been very successful with some. Lastly, creating projects that have elements of peer-to-peer teaching has been very successful. Whether I use shoulder-partners and have each of them teach the other person a segment of reading, or having class presentations on artists and art movements, providing students the opportunity to share their knowledge has worked well.
As an end note, motivation of students will always be the big challenge, and finding the ways to over-come individual barriers and engage them in studio projects will always be my goal and therefore motivating factor to teach.
Hi Jennifer!
ReplyDeletePlayful teaching with high-interest elements and technology seems like a recipe for motivating students in most classes--I know it works well with my elementary students in the library. But it sounds like you also use a humanist approach and actually spend time getting to know your students in order to relate projects to their personal lives.
While reading your post it struck me that motivating students in fine art must be very difficult if they are not already motivated. There are grades and expectations for contributing and collaborating, I'm sure, but the essence of CREATING must work best with intrinsic motivation, no?
I say that, however, but I'm also thinking back to my fine art classes in high school and the motivation I had to impress my peers. Because of the nature of art and how very PUBLIC it was, peer approval was a major extrinsic motivating factor. Your use of peer-to-peer teaching has taken that beyond approval for a more collaborative force--which seems much healthier for a students psyche!