Self Reflection and Intrinsic Motivation

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“Like and Wonders should be formative, and serve the purpose of improving the project, the class, the students, and the teacher.” -Trevor Muir, The Epic Classroom (page 173)

In this quote Muir talks about the self reflection system he uses in his classes where students talk about what they liked about the project and what they wonder could have gone better. I think this phrasing is perfect! It really encourages students to talk about what they didn’t like without blaming anyone specifically. This also encourages them to make changes for the future.

“I always want my students to be intrinsically motivated above all else… But there is a reality that extrinsic motivation has power as well, and the lure of a class period, or even 20 minutes of celebration can sometimes be enough motivation for students to fight to meet a deadline.” -Trevor Muir, The Epic Classroom (page 178)

I really like what the author is saying in this quote about how he motivates his students. I agree that sometimes extrinsic motivation is powerful and necessary. But, I am wondering if we can do more to foster intrinsic motivation in our students. So I found this awesome article about 27 Ways to Promote Intrinsic Motivation In The Classroom. Some of the top ones that I can see myself using in my online classroom are:

1. Spark curiosity in the subject matter
2. Ask students what motivates them for sports or other activities and then tap into those motivators
3. Praise students for meaningful accomplishments
4. Create a trusting atmosphere
5. Discover your students’ passions

How it All Started!

Your classroom, your way was the name of the survey I put out to all of my students to get them involved in a very important aspect of their learning – classroom environment!

I started thinking about environment after reading Chapter 5: Crafting an Epic Setting in the book The Epic Classroom by Trevor Muir. In this chapter he talks about the classroom setting being vital to the learning experience. Students and teachers are all used to the traditional rows of desks, but we need to push outside of the box and think about new ways that we can give students a more effective learning environment.

The first thing that came to mind for me was my teacher mentor during my senior year of college, Tom Hopper. His classroom set up is amazing! He has tables, standing desks, a couch, and my personal favorite… Fit desks!

I don’t have any pictures from his classroom but just to give you an idea of what Fit desks are I added a picture from Google below:

So, I thought about his awesome classroom setting and how much the students got out of it. But, the big question for me was how can this same idea translate into the virtual classroom?

Taking It Straight to the Students!

I got a few ideas together but then I thought, what if my students don’t like this idea? Then I remembered a section of the chapter I was reading talked about involving students in this process. “This is an opportunity to give students ownership of the setting of their story… they are owning another crucial piece of the learning.” -Trevor Muir The Epic Classroom pg 117.

So I put out a survey with my ideas, and the space for students to suggest other ideas:

The ideas I included were:

• Padlet to share personal (school appropriate) artwork
• Student feature in the announcements each week with things that students send to me (birthdays, sports/clubs/academic achievements)
• Non-graded discussion board for each unit for students to chat about topics in the course/help each other prepare for the tests
• Book/tv/movie recommendation lists that students can add to
• Sessions during or after school that we can meet as a group to discuss class topics

I hope to implement at least one of these ideas in each of my classes (right now the student feature suggestion is the most popular) and I will do a follow up blog post about how they turn out!

Teachers need to talk to other teachers for lots of reasons, to learn, grown, vent, work together, etc… This can be a bit difficult when you work from home and don’t see other teachers in the break room during lunch. But, that is what a Personal Learning Network (PLN) is for!

I have 3 major PLNs that I go to for support and inspiration.

First, I have the iEducator Facebook Group. This group has 6 members total so everyone contributes a lot. Because we all teach different subjects, this group is mostly for inspiration and technical support. We all share on this group awesome things that our students do that inspired us. When one of my students does something awesome I want to share it with this group because I am proud of them. I also like to look at the things my fellow iEducators post for inspiration when I need it. We also ask each other questions about important dates, share information about upcoming events, and lots of other stuff.

Second, I belong to a Facebook group called Technology in the Art Room. This group is AWESOME. I would say that about half of my time on this group’s page is spent posting/commenting and the other half I am just reading over other people’s posts. I really like this group because it is subject specific and technology specific. People share fun projects that they do with technology in their classes so I find this extremely relevant to what I do on a daily basis. I also post a lot of tips in this group. I shared with everyone about getting Google Certified, how I use Padlets in my classes, and a new podcast I found about using Google in the Classroom. 

And lastly, I joined the Art Teachers Facebook group while I was in college and wanting to gather ideas for when I became a teacher. While some of it is still relevant, mostly it has to do with projects and tools that can really only be used in the face-to-face classroom. Plus a lot of teachers in the group teach elementary school. I mostly use this group for inspiration rather than specific help.

Overall, these 3 groups are amazing to be a part of! I typically look at them after work each day for a bit and sometimes I save posts or take notes from them to implement the next day or revisit later. I like contributing to these groups, especially the Technology in the Art Room group because on there are a lot of teachers that are new to using technology for art and I feel like I can contribute a lot to that discussion. At first I missed chatting with the other teachers at lunch but these PLNs make up for a lot of that, especially the iEducator group where I am writing directly to my awesome coworkers!

Reflection is something very important for everyone to do, especially teachers. Two major ways that I reflect, learn, and grow are through personal reflection (blogging and note taking) and going through the notes on the observations done by my supervisor.

Personal Reflection: I reflect personally by taking notes on things happening in my classes and using them to better serve my students later. I write about certain assignments that I need to clarify the directions of, what I should ask students about in the future, what I am doing really well with, and what I think that I need to improve on.

Observations: I absolutely love getting my observations back from my supervisor. Even though I do reflect on my work personally, I think that it is much better to get reflections from a fresh set of eyes. Sometimes things are pointed out to me that I never even thought of, but will greatly improve my student’s class experience. And the biggest thing that I am working on is getting students to think deeper in classroom discussions. I was given this amazing resource on what kinds of questions to ask my students in discussions to get them to think deeper about the prompt and their answer to it. Some of them that I try to include now are: “What makes you think that _______________?”, “What are some of the causes that led to ______________?”, and “How does that compare to _____________?”

Because of the reflection given to me during observations, I can better serve my students.