Moo-tivational Teaching

"Hey mom, I found a gold penny under my bed! Isn't this Sacagewea on the front?"

I turned away from the hated dishwater whose goal in life is to wreak havoc on my hands and looked at my seven year old, the youngest contributor to the never ending pile of dishes that find their way to my sink on a daily basis. She was holding a gold dollar.

"Sachaja-who-ha?" I asked, earning an immediate frown of disgust.

"Sacagewea...you know...Luis and Clark..." The 'duh' was unspoken, but so very evident in her tone.

"Oh yeah. Right. Sacagewea," I said, vaguely remembering something about her hooking up with Robin Williams in 'Night at the Museum'. I looked at the coin and pretended to study it carefully. It was an Indian alright and that was about all I knew.

"I think it might be sugar, but I'm not 100% positive," I said trying to sound confident ( I was more like .000003% sure).

"Then let's look it up," she said. So we did.

I am madly in love with google. If Dave ever tires of my redneck ways and leaves me for some sophisticated woman with a matching set of dishes I am running away with google and we are going to make our own gaggle of googlets.


I am so weird (like you needed that spelled out for you).

Anyway, she was right. See?


She is officially smarter than me. She has a second grade education and she is smarter than I am. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

While we googled facts and learned a few new things together I enjoyed observing her thirst for knowledge. I am so happy that she has an internal motivation to learn. That is becoming increasingly rare. It seems the days when knowledge in and of itself was all the reward a child needed for motivation to learn are slipping away without anyone noticing that they are making an exit. That seriously worries me.

I have often thought to myself that motivating children to learn is the biggest part of my job. I have done so many things to motivate them. I have had parties and dances and given fun rewards. I have dressed up...oh my have I dressed up...for one reason or another through my eleven years as a teacher. I've been Sandy (from Grease) and sang and preformed on stage. I've been a nun (like in Sister Act), again preforming for the children at our school. I've been Baby Spice (don't ask). I've been a monster from under the bed....a mouse...a lion and a clown (the non scary version.).

I've even been a cow...a pregnant cow at that. And not just any cow. I was a cool cow from Kalamazoo. No really I was. Look...

Clearly I have no shame.

The point is that I've done all that and more to motivate students, but really there was something behind all the crazy things I did that motivated them more than anything else.

Love.

I've loved every single one of my students and made sure they knew that I loved them. It is a great motivator and is the best secret I know to being a successful teacher. So while I worry about their lack of internal motivation all I know to do is to keep on loving them, keep on teaching them and keep on praying for them.


God will take care of the rest.


(He really rocks at this love thing too.)