Strategies for Motivating Apathetic Students: Insights from Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers Podcast
How to help students find and manage motivation.
I'm in the middle of a Thirty-Day Challenge. This is 19/30.
Today, I listened to a Truth for Teachers podcast about what to do when students don’t want to think for themselves.
In it, Angela Watson shares, "I believe the best way to tackle student disengagement and apathy is by directly addressing it with students. This involves having open and honest conversations about the issue and experimenting together with a variety of approaches, allowing students to select what works best for them.”
One of the things that resonated with me was when she made the point that most adults don't always want to do their work. Some incentives like money, transportation, and shelter often motivate us when nothing else will.
Students don't have these external motivators.
She recommends taking time to model how to push through a lack of motivation and helping kids develop a toolbox of strategies they can use to tackle challenging tasks.
As educators, we can often worry too much about having the right answers when being authentic and vulnerable with students helps build those important relationships. Sharing our struggles with motivation and how we overcome them sends a powerful message.
My Takeaway
The Pomodoro technique is referenced in the podcast. In the future, I will research strategies for building motivation and productivity and then practice them alongside my students.
This way, we can both build our toolkit together.
As I we build our toolkit I will begin to draft a system students can use weekly to revisit goals and track important tasks.
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