Students should be motivated by other students, and most importantly by herself. Bob Peterson’s “Motivating Students to Do Quality Work” (1994) is discussed as a Exhibition where students make their own standards, teacher collaborate, and the child’s esteem is primary source of gratification.
The “how” in motivating students is the concept of Peterson’s article. The effort is to “increase” (Peterson 219) student participation because there is a difference in a person who does for her own enjoyment rather than trudging toward a reward someone else grants them. Valuing the “intrinsic” (219) against the “extrinsic” (219) brings out a self-esteem and building of an inner voice. Focusing on what the students are capable of instead of how to school them not only rewires the educational system but revives what the purpose of learning is—to seek information, incorporate what we already know, and communicating that to others.
Students interested in being the learners is process relevant to every level of education (221). If the student, child or not, is uninterested in applying, let alone attending a program, it is due to a lack of positive stimulation. To jumpstart the energy is a checklist in which the student can pick and chose what they are interested in, and develop concerns toward a world they are going to partake in as they look at social leaders and mindful literature (221). Teachers working together to combine courses is also a creative task (220). It shakes up the classroom and encourages ingenuity that otherwise would not take place when each teacher is the lone leader of his own lesson plan. When projects include only homework and hand-raising, there is a silence in a classroom that does not allow a student express ideas. This makes conferences doctored to the children to leave the parent-teacher conferences an intriguing concept that empowers a child who may feel irresponsible to discipline (223).
Acknowledging students was not a method used for most of my education. Primarily, the only time my lessons were student-led (with enthusiasm) was in an art class where autonomy was best exercised as a lone sport. As for my other classes, I soon developed a trait for being “indifferent to the quality of [my] work” (220) because each course was its own island. The Exhibition Checklist (220) is a method I did not encounter until the last years of my schooling. By this time, it was already expect that we were tuning our self-discipline. At first, I found it intimidating because the boundaries of this system were so vague. I was very used to working for rewards, and acknowledgement. After some floundering, I overcame it: I planned, I failed, I figured it out. Eventually, I gratified and heightened my own standards. I built inner-values. By the end, I thrived as one of the most self-motivated students my teachers had come across, and were proud of my overhaul from screw-up to overachiever. Though the checklist is not something I can imagine in my youth, I appreciate it appearing later in my life. I have a body of work to show for, and the memories to confirm how much I grew.
Works Cited
Peterson, bob. “Motivating Students to do Quality Work” Rethinking Our Classrooms. 2 (1994): 219 – 224.
