Motivation Reflection

The discussion on motivation this week was certainly interesting. I realized just how much our system as is, is not set up for students to be motivated to learn for the sake of learning. Grades and test scores which have no real meaning to them are the primary forces that drive motivation. School is currently a system where students are motivated to get good grades to get into college to get into grad school to get a good job. This shows to me a loss of the principle of education to educate the whole person or to educate so students enjoy learning. I think that our system needs to shift focus to truly motivate students to learn and do high quality work that they can get something out of. I do not necessarily think the Common Core is a way that students can be motivated because there are strict limitations to what the students are learning and when. Teachers will likely feel a lot of pressure to get students to achieve Core benchmarks and get good scores on standardized tests. With this pressure, I imagine many teachers may be reluctant to make an innovative lesson that is relevant and interesting to students. I think our current system is so limited because there are so many specifics teachers feel they need to stick to that there is little room to think about student motivation. I myself really struggled with the activity where we tried to create a plan to make a school, class or specific lesson that focused on motivation. I think this was so challenging for me because of the strictness of our education system. With so much emphasis on grades and tests scores, I think teachers and students alike find it difficult to think outside the box. I hope that in my future teaching, I will be motivated myself to really look at me lessons and try to make them relevant and interesting so my students will appreciate learning as a process, and not be so focused on grades and test scores like I have been and still am.