September 17, 2014
Author: , M.S.
It’s no secret that most university teacher training is focused on academic content. Unfortunately, as I hear all the time in my teacher training workshops, most teachers find themselves inundated with motivation problems not content problems. Let me give you some surefire motivation methods that you’ve never heard before.
Years ago parents reliably motivated their offspring to see the value of school and how to behave there. Regrettably, not all contemporary parents are performing those tasks as reliably. That means that if you are working with unmotivated, misbehaved students, you are often going to have the responsibility for providing the missing motivation.
There are countless albeit not well-known methods to motivate students. Let me give you a few examples. Of course, it takes more than a few interventions to motivate an unmotivated student but these examples will show you the kind of powerful tools you can find and use. A big favorite from my teacher training courses is to ask students to “Name all the jobs and businesses you would love to do as an adult.” Students list many desirable jobs. Next, assist students to determine which of those jobs require education and a diploma. Usually, it will be all of them.
Here are some great follow-up interventions. Assist students to compare the likely salary, benefits and tenure of jobs open to grads vs. jobs open to dropouts. They’ll discover grads earn about $329,000 more in their lifetime. Students can discuss which they would prefer: higher or lower paying jobs. Finally, if you like humorous interventions, tell the class you no longer want to be referred to as teacher, that because diplomas are so valuable, from now on, you’d like to be referred to as banker-- and be sure to recommend that students keep their diplomas in a vault.