Response #7

Many of you work with children. What are some of the issues concerning motivation with children? How do address motivation in the classroom? Can you motivate them or does motivation come from within?


Imagine entering a place where you never been, the people in there are strangers for you, and the person in charge is talking to you in some words that you have never heard. Well, that is how some of my students feel when they get to my classroom (kinder level).
As we read in Brown (ch. 6) self-esteem is one of the most important factors that influence the learning process of an ELL. So, if they feel insecure about their environment, the people, the language, etc, they will have very difficult time digesting all the information that they hear and see. Besides the factors that I already talked about, which are in our control, there are many factors that are out of our control such as; Lack of parent involvement in the learning life of the students, socio-economic situations that prevent students to have access to a diverse of experiences that other students do, rich experiences and interactions with people from other cultures and languages, etc. All these factors are out of teachers’ hands; however, there are many things that we can do to assist in improving these conditions.
Motivating students in the classroom is not easy, especially when we don’t want to use extrinsic motivation. Motivating students in an intrinsic manner is a process; yes we use rewards, stickers, prizes, etc. However, throughout the year students learn that not everything they do has to be rewarded externally, they know, especially ELLs that there are many reasons why they have to perform well; They learn to have pride in their bilingual skills, their culture and themselves.