The Value of Choice
Motivating students to achieve can often be a challenge and motivating them to behave can be a significant challenge, especially to newer educators. Sometimes the good grade or the "nice job" are simply not enough to keep students striving to both achieve and stay within the bounds of your classroom rules.
One effective approach is to induce students to motivate themselves rather than depend upon the teacher's attempts to somehow push motivation onto them.
But how does one do this?
Jonathan Erwin's The Classroom of Choice: Giving Students What They Need and Getting What You Want might be a good starting point.
Erwin's book helps a teacher create a successful learning environment by linking classroom management to the needs of your students.
Drawing from the theories of William Glasser, Erwin provides hundreds of strategies for every grade and subject area. Teachers will learn how to identify students' intrinsic motivations, pinpoint the reasons for learning and behavior problems, and connect to students through learning styles, multiple intelligences, cooperative learning, brain-based teaching, and other approaches.
The book can be used as a "toolbox" to quickly get new classroom activities and management techniques. It can also be used as an "ideabox" to help you select strategies that are going to be the most effective for reaching the learning and behavioral goals of a particular unit.
Teachers everywhere face the daily challenge of engaging students whose knowledge, skills, needs, and temperaments vary greatly. How does a teacher establish a learning environment that supports the class as a whole while meeting the particular needs of individual students?
Erwin believes the answer lies in offering students real opportunities rather than setting up the obstacles built in to typical discipline and motivation techniques. His approach is built upon the five basic human needs of William Glasser's Choice Theory: survival and security, love and belonging, power through cooperation and competency, freedom, and fun. Erwin shows that by understanding these needs, teachers can customize and manage a classroom environment where students learn to motivate and monitor themselves.
Drawing on theories and practices from experts in a variety of learning techniques, Erwin explores each of the five basic needs to create nearly 200 adaptable strategies for teaching and classroom management at any grade level. Teachers will find dozens of ideas for helping students make positive changes, including:
- Improving their work habits,
- Connecting curriculum with individual interests,
- Opening lines of communication with teachers and other students,
- Boosting self-worth through accomplishment, and
- Supporting their classmates in cooperative work.
For teachers seeking a win-win situation in managing their classrooms, The Classroom of Choice is an excellent aid in creating a learning environment where students and teachers approach each day with energy and enthusiasm.
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development has created a "study guide" to help educators better understand and use Erwin's book. This guide is an invaluable link between the ideas in the book and the realities in the classroom.
As educators we certainly want to do our utmost to challenge students to do their very best. When we see students who are unmotivated our first tendency is to try to do something to motivate them. Perhaps we should first ask ourselves what we can do to get them to motivate themselves....
The Advantage Press has developed a set of Motivation Packets along the lines of appropriate praise. We believe these packets may be helpful along with your words of encouragement to those students we know could be doing better. Check our website for free samples from this program.
Is there a relationship between healthy students and motivated students? Read our take on this in our September 2006 Newsletter.
The Advantage Press, Inc. publishes a number of behavior packets that can help students assess their own social and emotional problems. You are welcome to try our free samples.