Drive

This book was interesting to read. There were some chapters rather intriguing, while others not so much. If I were asked if the book was beneficial, I would probably say no. The information was set in the business world, and even though it wasn't difficult to translate to education, I felt it was unnecessary. Our textbook provided us with plenty of information about the various topics regarding classroom management. The information was quite useful when it came to my job, though. I work at Gordmans and my boss greatly enjoyed hearing about what my author had to say.
Some of the chapters were beneficial. The purpose and mastery chapters stick out in my head the most. Providing a purpose for students increases the chances of mastery tremendously. I was never given a purpose for my history courses in high school and that area is definite need of growth before teaching.

I feel the book would have been more effective and beneficial if it was our only text for the course. However, the main text is definitely the most important reading material for this course. As students heading off for student teaching next semester, we are super busy. We have countless papers due, projects galor, and some have families. Reading two texts pertaining to similar information is a waste in my opinion. Was the book useful to me, yes. However, I actually used the book more so toward my job than my education future.

Drive

This section of the book tied everything together for me, in terms of what I can use in my classroom.   The emphasis on autonomy, giving students the opportunity to decided what they want to learn and hold them to it, is something that I can see myself doing in the future.  By allowing students to decide what they want to learn, it will allow students to be more intrinsically motivated.  That being said, I have to be honest with myself in saying that it will take the use of baby steps for me to allow this to happen in my classroom.  I know that as a soon to be first year teacher I still have a million things to learn about having a real classroom and the idea of immediately allowing my students to decide on all their learning is a bit scary.  To begin implementing this in a classroom I’m going to begin with tic-tac-toe assignment boards, allowing some choice in texts to be read, and always allowing students to choose their final project.   As I gain more experience I plan on allowing more freedom to choose for my students, as I don’t want to hinder their motivation or growth.  

What I took most away from Drive was how to use motivation and rewards in the classroom.  As the book pointed out what had previously to motivate others no longer does, so in order to overcome this challenge I must figure out several things, why do I want to motivate my students (if there isn’t a purpose then it’s a waste of time),  what is important to them in terms of motivation (this involves getting to know my students beyond knowing just their face and what class period), and how I’m going to reward them to keep them motivated without it resulting into the carrot and the stick cycle.  Instead of expecting my students to come to class wanting to learn it’s finally sunk in that many of these students don’t know how to “play school” well, which means I will be constantly trying to figure out what works for each of my students in order for them to be successful.

Type I For Parents and Educators

This chapter was definitely the most relevant as a teacher. I really think DIY report cards would be an interesting thing to try in the classroom. This would be hard to implement in the younger grades, but it would be a good way to introduce goals to students. If students are taught from an early age the importance of setting goals I think they will be more likely to set goals for themselves in the future. This process makes students even more accountable for their grades than they already are because they set the goals themselves. Since the teacher fills out their own report card for each student I think it could be a reality check for some on the progress that is actually being made. I’m not sure who mentioned it in class, but I also like the idea of students writing a letter to their parent/guardian explaining the reasoning for the grade they have. I feel like these strategies would be most effective at the secondary level because most elementary students haven’t really been taught the importance of grades, or at least I wasn’t.

The strategy I think is the most important for elementary educators to incorporate into the classroom is getting students to see the big picture. I think it is important to include this in every lesson at a young age in order for students to see the reasoning why they are spending their time at school. If teachers start doing this when students are young, students will be able to see how different principles build on each other.

I was really surprised to find out how much Drive related to both business and education. I was a little skeptical at first because I didn’t think there were that many similarities, but as I kept reading I was able to make connections like those for mastery and purpose. I really do believe that we as teachers need to help students move toward autonomy, mastery, and purpose in order to lead a happy, successful life. 

Chapter 6

      This chapter was quite intriguing to me. I could really relate to the whole purpose point. As Zeba and Laura both brought up, purpose is ideal for getting students to learn. I was a great example of such a student. In high school I enjoyed my math classes, but mainly because my teachers always gave me some sort of purpose for learning it. There was one class in which the teacher actually told us we would probably never use what we were learning ever again. It was the shortest lesson of my high school years. My teacher knew the topic was being learned merely for standards and benchmarks and got it over with as quickly as possible. On the other side of learning, I hated my history courses. My teacher was lazy and could never give us a reasonable purpose for learning the subject.
      I felt like the book should have almost turned the last two chapters around. A student with a motivation 3.0 mind would master a topic after hearing about the purpose for learning it is. A student will never master something and then ask the teacher when they would ever use in real life.
    I feel motivation 3.0 with purpose as the main goal would be more consistent than motivation 2.0, where it is more with rewards. A teacher can easily provide a reason behind any topic, but there may not always be a reward in completing the tasks that go along with the lesson for the day.

Chapter 6

I agree with Zeba on the fact that teachers need to spend more time telling students why it is important to learn a specific thing instead of just teaching them how to do it. I really used to think this was important for the older grades because I never thought of bringing it into the elementary classroom. However, I now think it is important for teachers to start telling students why they are learning something even at the elementary level because it will give students a purpose for doing their work. This will help students become motivated from an early age and hopefully spark a passion for learning.

The use of these pronouns in the classroom can play a large role in the classroom environment. Teachers can instantly make their classroom more welcoming to students if they are willing to listen to students’ ideas instead of making all of the decisions themselves.  I never realized how much of an impact one little word can make on the classroom environment, but by simply saying “our classroom” instead of “my classroom” could make students react more positively to the teacher. I think by using pronouns that include the entire class students will feel more accountable to get their work finished because they don’t want to disappoint anyone. Using the correct pronouns is one easy way to get students to want to be in the classroom. 

Chapter 6

What Isa stated in her Chapter 4 post, that allowing students to feel a degree of ownership in class assignments it helps prepare them to make meaningful choices for themselves in the future, directly relates to both the why and how we do things, as well as, the use of pronouns.  While teachers wear many hats sometimes we spend more time explaining how to do a specific assignment (or learn a specific skill) without explaining to the student why it is important to learn it.  I have heard teachers give the excuses “you’re at school to learn” or “it’s part of the curriculum I didn’t make it up” instead of giving the actual reason why the assignment/subject or skill is important.  

That directly ties into the use of pronouns in the classroom.  I have heard during both my high school career and during my practicums, “This is my classroom if you don’t like it get out!”  That statement makes it very clear that the students have very little ownership of their learning environment, which often results in lack of interest.  If students had ownership over their classroom (even for just the class period) it helps create a productive environment and contagious positive behavior.  This also helps create mutual respect in the classroom, which again aids with desired behavior.