Education Motivational Education My 7th Grade Student,

Education

Motivational Education

My 7th grade student, Alice Harding, had problems since the beginning of the year. Not only was she painfully shy and never participated in group work; she also appeared not to be interested in either studying the lessons or doing her homework. Whereas her work in the beginning of the years was promising, it had reached a point where I felt intervention is necessary. Her grades had dropped with nearly 20% since the beginning of the year. I have chosen Alice for this project, because I feel she is a perfectly intelligent girl, who with the right methods can be motivated to perform much better.

I had previously tried several methods to attempt to enhance Alice's feelings of security in the classroom. One of the methods was dividing the class into smaller groups of four, and giving them simple tasks to do. Alice however still failed to participate, and she tended to be overwhelmed by the other members of the group.

A way to deal with this could be to make the groups smaller still, and I decided to try pair work, and work up to larger groups later. I also made an examination of the literature, in order to educate myself in strategies that might be of use not only for Alice, but also for the class as a whole.

Brophy (1998) suggests four strategies through which a teacher might enhance student motivation. It is for example a teacher's task to reduce the students' fear of failure or embarrassment, to help them persist in their efforts to achieve success, to lead them to accept the goals of the classroom and to help them develop the knowledge and skills the classroom activities were intended to develop. I don't believe that I previously achieved any of the above four goals with Alice. Harmin (1995) was helpful in giving me ideas on this issue.

Many of my colleagues believe that praise will serve to enhance motivation. I have not seen this with Alice. In fact, whenever I praised her for work in the past, she appeared more embarrassed and shy than ever. Thus I have decided to take another approach. Harmin (1995) suggests "I appreciate..." And "I'm with you..." statements. These kinds of statement emphasize the collaborative effort in the classroom, involving both the student and the teacher. So, as an initial strategy I have tried this with Alice and her classmates. They appeared to respond well, and Alice also appeared to be slightly less shy. After my first class of doing this, when I told her I appreciate her effort to turn in the work she can handle, she even made eye contact with me for the first time in months. The other students also responded well, since they could see that I was sincere in my comments, and that I tried to include everybody.

My next strategy was to implement pair work. When Alice appeared significantly less shy and bored in class, I asked the students to each choose the person sitting closest to them as a partner. I then gave them each a piece of reading. Each partner had to read his or her piece silently. After this they were asked to explain to each other what they had read. Since each partner in the pair had a task, Alice had no choice but to participate. It was painful to watch her at first, but the girl who was her partner was wonderfully patient, and listened with attention as Alice stutteringly told her story. Gradually, as the drone of voices around her continued, Alice began to relax, and appeared to enjoy telling her friend what she had read. For homework I asked them to choose their own piece of reading from a book, magazine or newspaper, and to prepare their opinions on the selected work. Alice came prepared. From then on, she never failed to complete her assignments. A few more weeks of pair work gave her sufficient confidence to venture an answer here and there in the classroom as well. To these answers I of course responded with the above "I appreciate..." statements.

The failure I experienced with Alice at first was doubtlessly due to the fact that she felt singled out, and that she had a problem that nobody else in class was facing. This may also have been due to my reaction to her shyness. I was so determined to make her feel good about any effort at all, that I completely overdid my praise of her. This made her classmates feel resentful, and it had the opposite of the desired effect. The moment I therefore changed the way I treated both her and the other students in class, they all began to feel more equal to each other and to me. I tried to emphasize the fact that we are all in the learning process together, and that I needed their help as much as they needed mine. I particularly paid attention to addressing all of the students together, without singling out anybody. I also tried to let them know that we were all different people with different needs, and that we needed to respect that.