My Take on motivation N discipline

All of us teachers are tempted to try to recreate for our students the best parts of our own school experience. We want our students to have the same advantage that we did. At the same time, it is important to realize that our students today also want their own school experience, and that expectation may differ in crucial ways from what we teachers valued most when we went to school.

One example is that students today expect success but are unwilling to work for it. Students want “fast and easy” instead of “work and earn.” Many teachers are frustrated with such notion that guides many students of today. Students often miss the idea that it is their responsibility to learn, practice and even attend school. Instead, they often feel as though they should be adequately “entertained.” Feeling “GOOD” has become more valued than working “HARD”. Expectation of entitlement with little effort is common in today’s classroom.

One of my teacher blogged about inspiring (which I equate to intrinsic motivating) our students, goals can be easier to achieve and is more sustainable. I agree that as a teacher, we need to be able to intrinsically motivate our students. In addition to intrinsic motivation, I would also add the need for discipline. But why need to add discipline? I hear of teachers who question what to do with students who are not prepared for lesson, and will not study. Although, I know it is difficult to assess which is the cause and which is the result, but finding the ways and means to increase intrinsic motivation (such as my teacher’s suggestion to focus on the underlying reason of why students want to study, like getting students to simply complete the sentence, “I want to study .......... because…….” ) can help solve behavioral problems. I know that our students’ problems may defy the above simplistic solution, but I feel that as teachers, what we can and must do is to reawaken the intrinsic motivation in our students especially those who have lost interest in studying and perhaps hope. I believe that those students without intrinsic motivation and discipline often make us teachers wonder why we bother with them at all when there are my “other” students who want to learn. In addition, they “push” our buttons and “test” our limits, challenge us! Unless we teachers are careful, our students can burn us out as well. Hence, it is important that students be intrinsically motivated and discipline.