Beginning on page 185, Pink details some specific strategies for working with kids, but it is basically a repetition of what I extrapolated on my own in my last blog post.
Instead of beating a dead horse, I thought I would share with you a REAL LIVE example of a functional English classroom in a traditional public school that actually puts into practice so many of the techniques and strategies we have learned about in theory. I am really hoping I end up in a place next year where I can get away with stealing basically everything here that she details. THIS is what intrinsic motivation and genuine learning look like. I used a lot of what I learned in Pink's book to create the Classroom Management Plan that we needed to put together for Julie's English Methods class. Like Shelley Wright in the link above, I want my students to be highly involved in planning the curriculum for the semester based on their own interests and curiosities. In other words, I want to give them autonomy of their own learning and allow them to set their own purpose. I've actually had some success in implementing this kind of strategy, though on a smaller scale, during clinical practice this year. In my first semester, we put on a class debate during our Persuasive Unit because a couple of students specifically asked to. And just last Friday, I have two students who want to expand their essay comparing a common theme between Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and The Hunger Games with a third text (one wants to use the 2nd Maze Runner and the other wants to use Children of the Corn, while a third students want to do a dramatic reenactment of "The Lottery." (I told him if he could figure out a way to make the thematic connection between the two texts clear, then he can go for it.) The best part of this recent project is that the three students mentioned are three of my LEAST motivated students. And here they are now, asking if its okay for them to do more work! While I feel like Pink could have summed up all of his arguments and suggestions into a solid 20-page article rather than a 180 pg book, there is a great deal of value in rethinking the way that we have traditionally tried to motivate students--his arguments go a long way to explain why what we've been doing doesn't seem to be working very well. While I think we're still quite a ways off in figuring out how to structure classrooms and administration in a way that accommodates students' innate desires to explore and pursue mastery of tasks, there are definitely some baby steps that ANY teacher (English or not) can take to improving students' sense of autonomy and purpose in the classroom.
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