MOTIVATION AND LEARNING
from The Reading Instruction Show
Motivation is an internal state that causes us to direct attention or maintain behavior. Motivation can direct our attention and sustain our behavior toward a particular goal. All students enter kindergarten excited and motivated to learn. They see themselves as able learners, whole and complete. But something happens in the next two years as some of our students travel down the educational conveyer belt. They begin to view themselves as defective. The system begins to view them as broken toys that need to be sent back to Santa’s workshop. In order to get the education they need, the educational bureaucracy has forced us to stamp a big label on the foreheads of these children: learning disabled. As described above, this term does not exist. All humans learn. Learning is a state of being human and being alive. With their label now in place, we send these little humans off to the rooms down the hall to get them all fixed up so they can return to the “normal” classroom with “normal” kids. Just as all students learn, all students are motivated to do something. The problem is that some of these things are not always school-related things. But again, put yourself in the place of a student with a reading disability. How motivated you would be to come to school and fail?
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