Teachers Topic: Motivating Students and Teachers

TeachersTopic is a periodical feature on www.teacherscount.com about a subject of interest to the teaching community written by a prominent expert in the field. Here, Ms. Susan Graham answers questions about motivating students to succeed. Susan Graham connects learning to life in her Family and Consumer Science classes at Gayle Middle School in Stafford County. She is a Virginia Education Association “I Can Do It” trainer, a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) in Career and Technical Education, a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards/State Farm Liaison for Virginia (NBPTS), a participant in the Virginia Teacher Quality Forum, and a Senior Fellow with the Teacher Leaders Network (www.teacherleaders.org).  Motivating Students and Teachers, answers by Ms. Susan Graham

What are specific techniques that can increase student's motivation?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a right answer to this question? The reality is that there are as many techniques to motivate as there are students to be motivated. Maslow, the great theorist about human personality, had it right—every human response is tied to addressing some need. Motivation is directly connected to meeting needs and we all have different needs, so motivation is really a pretty individual matter. Sometimes teachers struggle because they get so caught up in asking themselves, “How can I get these kids to do what I need or want them to do?” The more effective question might be “How can I present these concepts, skills and understandings as a solution to the needs of these kids?” Knowing what individual students need requires knowing students as individuals, and I think this might lay at the root of small class size discussions. With homogeneous groups, the needs may be somewhat similar, but with diverse groups of children, differentiation is not just about ability level or learning styles, it must also address diversity in the value systems and goals of those students.

If college entrance is a motivator for high school students and teacher excitement motivates the elementary level, what is a significant motivator for the middle grades?

Well, middle school is definitely a world of its own, and I do believe the middle school learner might present the greatest motivational challenge. (Of course that might be colored by the fact that I teach middle school.) As you’ve pointed out, young children will work for the approval of the teacher because they need that approval to feel safe and accepted.