This week went out in a bang! We had Thursday off for a snow day, and I believe we paid the price when the students had to come back for one more day of school. Unfortunately it was topped off with being a Friday( a low student motivational day anyways) . By the end of the week I had collected 6 cell phones, 3 I-Pod's, broke up a fist fight between 2 students(without touching them), written up 7 detentions and and 6 (1 day) In-School suspensions slips. I was questioning where the joy was in teaching by the end of my last class today. I also had one parent-student-teacher conference this week and talked to 2 different parents to setup for parent - student-teacher conferences next week to discuss behavioral problems. I feel that I have good rapport with the parents and support, but I sure question all of the time being spent on discipline issues with students that don't really care. Don't get me wrong, I do have some good students. I certainly do, but I sure have a few unmotivated and behavioral problem students in my last 2 period classes. With Cindy G. coming next week on Tuesday, I am not looking forward to the results from that day based on what I have seen happen this week. But what the heck, life goes on. Do the best you can, and don't sweet the small things. I know what needs to be taught. As time permits, I will be trying different methods we learned at NTI with the students to see if I can help improve their motivation and behavior. On to the next week!
Mike M
Research on motivation and performance in classroom settings is turning more and more to looking at how to integrate motivational strategies and practices into instructional design. In other words, every time you create a lesson plan, you would plan for motivation just as you would plan for practice and mastery of a set of skills. I'm actually studying this very subject now in a graduate level course that I am taking, so it's been on my mind. One model we've been looking at is Keller's ARCS model of motivational design. In it, he includes four broad categories for integration motivation into instruction. These are Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. If you are interested in looking at this model, check out these links-- http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art3_5.htm and http://www.ittheory.com/keller1.htm
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