Motivation is the key factor that helps us keep going. You require motivation no matter what you do in life, whether it is your personal life or your professional life.
If you are a teacher, you cannot motivate students if you yourself are not motivated. Hence, even to motivate others to help them grow, self-motivation is important.
Motivation is a constant effort and not a one-night thing. It requires time, attention and proper effort to build motivation in your students. However, everything is worthwhile when you see the results.
There are many ways to extrinsically motivate students, rewards, motivational quotes for students, etc., serve the purpose. However, as a teacher, you must focus on more. You should try to develop or cultivate inner motivation, the motivation that comes from within that is, intrinsic motivation in the students.
How to Cultivate Intrinsic Motivation in Students
1. Make Your Classroom Student-Centred
Gone are the days when students would sit staring at you teach, sitting glued at their seats. Instead of you being the primary focus of the class, you should focus on making your classroom student-centred. Involving your students in the class is necessary to keep them motivated. They must feel valued.
2. Go Beyond Textbook Learning
Involve as many elements and materials, tools, etc., as you can that amplify the learning experience for the students. Even if you do not teach online, you should try to leverage video learning to explain concepts. Take your students on educational field trips, let them perform practical experiments, assign them group assignments, etc. The goal is to make learning more than textbooks and study materials.
3. Give Them Freedom
Let your students shine. Give them tasks to handle on their own and just be a guide whenever they need help. When students deal with the problem and find solutions to it on their own, they are hit by a wave of motivation that comes from within. Even if they fail, it serves as negative motivation. Help them understand what mistakes they made and push them further. Sometimes, “I could not do it” serves more as motivation than “Yes! I did it.”
4. Make Learning Fun
The ways you teach, and the techniques that you use work matter a lot in motivating students. Have you heard students say that they like the way a teacher teaches and hence, they love the subject? That is the impact that a good teaching pedagogy has on students.
Make learning fun for the students. Use games, videos, graphics, quizzes, etc., whatever is possible, to twist the learning process for the students. It enhances the learning experience and keeps them motivated.
5. Be Clear with Your Rules and Instructions
It is very confusing and frustrating for the students if they are assigned a task and they do not know how to go about it. They must be clear about what they want to do. Therefore, be as clear as you can while assigning them tasks and explain in detail the rules and instructions. Give them enough time to go through it and ask their doubts. If a student does not understand what is to be done, in a long run, they will start disliking the subject, and if they dislike the subject, are there any chances of them being motivated to learn about it. Of course, not.
Final Thoughts
Motivation is a big factor in deciding how a student performs. As a teacher, you should constantly put in the effort to keep your students motivated in every possible way.
