Strategies to motivate student

A continuation of my earlier journal and what was lacking in my earlier findings which is on “what else can be done to help unmotivated students?” I started searching the Internet for strategies that others had adopted and hopefully to broaden my findings. I found an article, “Motivating Students” by Barbara Gross Davis informative and relates well with my concern.
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/motivate.html

I spent a couple of days reviewing and reflecting on the write-up. Below is what I have gained from the article.

1. General Strategies
a. Capitalize on students’ existing needs
b. Make student active participants in learning
c. Ask students to analyze what makes their class more or less “motivating”

2. Incorporating Instructional Behaviors that motivate students
a. Hold high but realistic expectations for your students
b. Help students set achievable goals for themselves
c. Tell students what they need to do to succeed in your course
d. Strengthen students’ self-motivation
e. Avoid creating intense competition among students
f. Be enthusiastic about your subject

3. Structuring the course to Motivate Students
a. Work from students’ strengths and interests
b. When possible, let students have some say in choosing what will be studied.
c. Increase the difficulty of the material as the semester progresses
d. Vary your teaching methods

4. De-emphasizing Grades
a. Emphasize mastery and learning rather than grades.
b. Design tests that encourage the kind of learning you want students to achieve.
c. Avoid using grades as threats

5. Motivating students by responding to their work
a. Give student feedback as quickly as possible.
b. Reward success.
c. Introduce students to the good work done by their peers
d. Be specific when giving negative feedback.
e. Avoid demeaning comments.
f. Avoid giving in to students’ pleas for “the answer” to homework problems

The author had elaborated on each of the points given above and I tend to agree on her findings. Also, her in-depth discussion on the topic gave me a much better understanding of our students and my role as a teacher.

Quoted from the article, “Effective learning in the classroom depends on the teacher’s ability… to maintain the interest that brought students to the course in the first place. Whatever level of motivation your students bring into the classroom will be transformed, for better or worse, by what happens in the classroom.” Indeed we as a teacher play an important role in our students’ learning journey, this made me realized the important of the correct values and beliefs we must had when we first went into teaching. And always to fall back on our values and beliefs and the going gets tough.

But what happens when we are not able to live up to the expectation?
Is this why teachers leave their profession?
Or are we giving ourselves too much pressure when our students fail to perform?
Should we shoulder all the responsibilities when they fail to perform?
What are my strength and weaknesses?

I probably would not be able to answer some of these questions, and very likely I can only find out the answers along the way.