Inspiration
Ever experienced an awe-filled classroom? The kind of awe that leaves students speechless? I have. Knock Knock by Daniel Beaty leaves my students swimming in thoughts. Beaty tells the story of his childhood. His father loved him deeply, but his world stopped when Beaty’s father went to prison. Years later, Beaty imagines a letter from his father teaching him to be a man. The Slam Poem’s message resounds: We are the sons and daughters of our parents, but we are not their choices. For any student struggling with a household dysfunction, a parent in prison, or muddling through a divorce, the message is inspirational and relevant. Relevant lessons create student buy-in.
With twenty-odd students in the classroom, finding a resource that impacts most students is challenging, but when you find one, take it all the way home to May.
Educators know extrinsically motivated students usually need a personal connection to buy into learning. Sadly, I teach fewer and fewer intrinsically motivated students each year. What could be the reason? Ding…ding…ding! You guessed it! Social media is one reason intrinsic motivation is down-trending in education. Students swipe to an eye-catching Tik-Tok video, earning a quick dopamine hit. Moving one finger one inch to swipe a cell phone screen reaps a reward. Students’ internal drives to imagine, create, and produce fade.
I wish social media addiction was just a nightmare. One solution I’ve found to energize extrinsically motivated students is to inspire strategically. Inspiration fills up students’ internal gas tanks. When the daily content is not a knock-out like Knock Knock by Daniel Beaty, I bring my A-game instruction. First, students create relevance between the content and themselves.
How do you make each lesson personally relevant to every single student? The secret is that you do not have to. They do. Use the six degrees of separation game, but classroom style. Students may not know Edgar Allan Poe, but what about the scary clown from Stephen King’s It? Maybe they don’t know It, but have they visited a haunted house? Let students create relevance together! Suddenly, closely reading another short story isn’t lame. Hype up the most enthusiastic student with your energy! Inspiration to learn hides inside excitement.
Content Delivery Tips
Vinh Giang, magician, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker, teaches professional communication all over the world. Teachers can apply his public speaking strategies inside the classroom.
Use your voice as an instrument. During instruction, consider your pacing. Are you speaking too fast? Is your voice monotone? Intentionally elevate or lower your pitch. Are you ending your sentences with confidence? Speak your last word with deeper resonance. How is your volume? Use a bold volume to influence. When instruction is vital, whisper for effect.
Mastering small communication skills keeps students focused on instruction. Inspire student learning by asking dichotomous reflective questions. Once students find the content personally relevant, motivating sustained effort follows. Insightful and influential instruction inspires, motivates, and educates.
Motivation
We start August motivated to be the best teacher, don’t we? Hahaha, that’s life laughing in your face—life’s challenges stomp motivated mindsets. Students are not immune either. Sometimes, I imagine my students and I ziplining across a forest canopy except we get stuck in the middle! Teaching requires ziplining students across the metaphorical zip line to the other side. Thankfully, motivation is a teachable skill.
James Clear, Atomic Habits author, illuminates life-changing habits that step in when motivation suspends us on that zip line.
He suggests starting small and increasing by one percent daily. Start students reading for five minutes a night with a timer. The next night, six minutes. As students accomplish small goals, their brains program the habit. Eventually, reading will be muscle memory. Clear suggests making the habit obvious. Have students place their books on the nightstand.
Clear also affirms that mindset shifts make habits desirable. The difference between “I don’t have to read. I get to read,” holds power. In class, reframe your words purposefully to promote gratitude.
Students need self-discipline to do uninspired tasks. Habits secure self-discipline. Evidence includes accidentally leaving your cell phone at home and feeling like you’re missing an appendage! Habits sustain daily momentum and motivation!
Education
Education, the last component in the Teacher’s Trinity, is more than grasping concepts in math, science, history, and reading. After strategically inspiring and motivating, teachers must ingrain education’s value. Yes, making As on a report card is valuable to their future, but that’s not what I’m equating with value. Classroom teachers shape students’ understandings of how to navigate a complex world. For our purposes, education seeks learning with delight, heeding corrections, and walking through life with a heart for equity and justice. Education is wisdom.
To transform a five-year-old with an oversized backpack into a high school senior flaunting a graduation gown means strategically teaching wisdom.
Inside the classroom, wisdom is mastering long-term gratification, setting goals, and empowering a personal vision. Instilling these attributes largely determines success. The 21st-century student continues to get sucked into the digital world, which means extrinsic motivation is on the rise. Teachers can increase rigor and celebrate as students meet small benchmarks to counter this. Praise the teeny growth. Loudly speak words that made us strive as kids, “I am so proud of you!” Learning must yield a greater emotional return for students to select working hard over social media.
Reverse roles to place learning inside your students’ hands. Assign your students a project to teach you a skill! Re-energize a love for learning. Optimize goal-setting while students feel excited and proud of their teaching accomplishments.
Develop vision by emphasizing students’ natural gifts and abilities. Students can discover their individual intelligence with an online assessment from IDRlabs. Knowing personal learning inclinations leads to passion and purpose, core ingredients for inspiration!
Educators never stop learning; check out our available graduate degree programs to hone your skills and promote lifelong learning and academic excellence.
