My basic teaching philosophy is that in order to be a successful educator, it is important to provide students with the motivation to learn and grow. I want students to be engaged and academically fulfilled during the progression of a typical school day. My goal as an educator is for students to feel interested, excited, and enthusiastic when it comes to learning. I intend to motivate students through challenging yet supportive lessons. As well, I want to increase student motivation by creating a safe classroom environment for my students where they feel like it’s okay to make mistakes. Through building a classroom community and positive environment, students will feel safe and eager to learn and positive relationships will be the result. I believe a positive classroom community can be reached through group work where students are given the opportunity to work with one another in a variety of team building and cooperative tasks resulting in trust and respect. It’s important to me as an educator that every student feels valued and included and that individual learning styles are taken into account. As an educator, students should be given the creative freedom to express themselves. I feel like sometimes students may feel anxious and not capable when it comes to certain tasks and therefore their motivation and drive to succeed diminishes. I believe that by increasing student engagement and motivation, students will be more interested and willing to learn in the classroom. Since students are more engaged and interested, students will feel more capable and greater student achievement will result.
I have had the benefit of volunteering in a grade 1 and grade 7 classroom before entering into this program at UBC, as well as volunteering with a couple of non-profit organizations where I have worked with children of varying abilities. Through my experience, I believe I have an understanding of what motivation and engagement looks like in a variety of different environments, however, I still have a lot to learn. Student motivation has to do with the students’ desire to participate in the learning process. It’s a students’ willingness to create goals that they want to accomplish, along with an interest and excitement to learn. Children may differ with the source of their motivation. Some children are intrinsically motivated and will complete an activity for its own sake, for the enjoyment and learning it brings, and a feeling of accomplishment. Other students may be extrinsically motivated where performance is based on some kind of reward. Through my observation, I have noticed that students who are motivated and engaged with the activity are often paying attention to the instructions, putting up their hands, asking questions, and demonstrate an eagerness and a drive to complete the activity effectively. What I have observed is that a lack of motivation amongst students is often seen through disengagement, slouched body language, often distracted, making excuses, and quiet. A lack of motivation can be due to lack of confidence and perceived capability or due to social and emotional aspects such as anxiety or depression. I am eager to learn more in order to support those students who have so much potential yet lack the motivation to succeed.
I am currently in a grade 2/3 class for my practicum. I have observed that there are a few students who lack motivation to complete the task and are not fully engaged. These students will get off of task easily, have trouble starting the task and therefore do not have any work to hand in or they get very chatty with their neighbours. I believe they have great potential however they just don’t feel motivated to complete the activities effectively and efficiently within the classroom. Within my practicum class, some are highly motivated and complete their tasks quickly and effectively, whereas, other students find difficulty even starting the task. These students often don’t have much to write or just sit there for the entire duration with only two sentences completed. As an educator, it is difficult to distinguish between a lack of motivation amongst these students due to no interest or if these students are not motivated because they are having trouble understanding the task and information being taught. In this case, extra support may be needed. I have also noticed that when these students are completing something that they are interested in and engaged in, their motivation goes off of the charts. It’s through my observation that I have gained a motivation myself to learn more on this topic in order to gain knowledge, techniques, and strategies to help students that require that extra support get started.