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.