Motivation

I first want to share a speech given in the movie Any Given Sunday by one of my favorite actors Al Pacino. It's a typical half-time locker room speech, and should not be used as a template for motivating students in class, haha but it touches on certain facets of motivation that are relevent to our discussion. warning: Pacino uses realistic football coach language...

Any Given Sunday speech

Obviously, motivation in the classroom is not going to look quite like this. With that said, it is interesting to think about in the context of external vs intrinsic rewards. The team is a professional one, so win or lose, the players are making big bucks. The power in the speech is that Pacino character is trying to instill intrinsic motivation, to win. But smaller than that, to play for each inch, to play for each other. Money could not motivate them to play much harder than they needed to to play on the team. Intrinsic motivation really is more powerful.

 In a recent TED talk I listened to (I listen to a LOT of TED talks) by Simon Sinek, I learned a little about the Wright Brothers. They were not the best suited to be the first in flight. There was actually a wealthy man racing to beat them. He had a hired team who worked for pay. The Wright Brothers' team consisted of men who's goal was not to make money, but to fly. In the end, the team with an intrensic interest in their work won because they were willing to put in the hard work and motivation. In the afterschool program in which I volunteer, there is a kid named Neil who is difficult to motivate. My friend was pared up with Neil and used candy to motivate him to read. The candy worked, but Neil kept trying to find out what the bare minimum was he would have to read in order to get candy. It took away any possibility of there being intrensic value in reading a book. Reading became a job that he had to do to get his wages, the denomination of which was Twix.

In the classroom, a teacher's job is not only to provide material for students to soak up, but also to motivate them to care about it in order to get the most out of it. Some teachers have an easier time with this than others. Instilling interest in literature is usually easier to do in most students then the Pathagorean theorem, but that doesn't mean a math teacher cannot find ways to foster creativity and desire for knowledge. In my own classroom, I really hope to motivate students in various ways. I will allow students to work together as a team, which has intrinsic motivation built in. I will also motivate students by making the material relatable to their own lives. Whether I'm teaching History, Geography, or Econ/Gov, I'll try to keep it dynamic to keep things interesting and motivate students to learn because they will be interested in the material. I also beleieve that this material is important for anybody who is to be a citizen of the world and wish to convey that message. I want to instill in students an enthusiasm for learning that will carry into the rest of their lives. they'll need it...