Part One of Drive

When you think of motivation, what do you think of? Do you think of some sort of award for doing something? Or is the act of doing something enough for you to complete a task? In other terms, do you rely on extrinsic motivation such as awards or monetary values that come from the outside or intrinsic motivation when the motivation comes within?  This summer my mentoring team and I tackled the book Drive by Daniel Pink.

The first part of the book is about identifying the Carrots and sticks of motivation the effects they have on a person’s short and long motivation. The carrot and stick approach is a combination of rewards and punishment to induce good behavior. As I was reading, I was thinking about how this affects the student’s motivation. A questioned I asked my mentoring team was "how do you find the balance in motivating students but not to dampen it?" Doug Masser replied "This is always a fine line. The carrot can be a great way to start learners, but it can’t always be the way to keep them producing. You have to switch to what motivates them, which I’ve found to be a choice and allowing them to show what they know in a meaningful way to them".  This is huge! Remembering back when I was in high school, I would always do better on assignments when I was allowed to choose the delivery method. Whether it was writing a paper, PowerPoint, poster, etc. The information would be the same on any of those methods, but I knew I would do better if I made a poster because I liked making posters. The choice is everything. Later on, in the book Pink talks about autonomy and the benefits of it.

The more I read about carrots and sticks and the more hesitant I was about using extrinsic rewards in the classroom for fear that students would be more focus the award itself and not the learning. In our discussion, Mr. Masser brings up the point that "often our students like the content or assignment but sometimes are students need a little boost to get them started." This is where extrinsic motivators can be beneficial and mini snickers can serve as that boost. But Mr. Masser reminds me that " No week-long project can be sustained on the promise of a snack-sized snicker… But that snickers can get their brains to switch from “this is a project I need to do” to “this project is going to be awesome!”  There is success when using extrinsic motivation when appropriately applied. 

I look forward to reading and hearing back from my mentoring team, tips I can use in the classroom, to help maintain and motivate my students! Stay tuned for part 2!