Motivation for Education?
Education is never a word that comes to mind when I think of things trending. I am not even sure that education has been or ever will be described as du jour. Yes, we see the occasional news report, Tweet, Facebook post or good old fashion magazine article. In all of my years of dedicating much time and energy to education, STEM is the closest thing that I can recall as being trendy. Why is that?
Well, this is something that I need to dig deeply into and consider very carefully. I am considering dedicating at least another 20 years to this "beast" of a thing. The question that has been the staple of my first 20 years in education came one day from my wife, as she could clearly discern my frustration and thoughts of just giving up efforts to give back to the community and only focus on educating our kids. "How do you motivate, I don't care?" As I wrap up the last few weeks of my graduate school experience, this question has come to mind, repeatedly. For so long, I believed that this was an impossible question to answer. This week, my efforts have been focused on beginning to answer this question.
It all starts at home
My first public school teaching experience is one that is still difficult to describe. It is even more difficult to comprehend. I can only say that no one, that has spent at least one full day at your local high school or middle school in the last 10 years, can even fathom what goes on daily in those schools. Dropping your kids off, visiting or volunteering for a few hours, and helping out with after school activities do not apply or suffice. So what is going on? I believe that there is not enough interest in education. Everyone assumes that the system is on auto-pilot with no need to take over the controls.
Here is a list of things that we can do to promote education.
Here is a list of things that we can do to promote education.
- Promote education daily through social media (we post about everything else).
- Communicate directly to your children's teachers on a regular basis.
- Write your government officials and ask for their perspectives on issues that are important to you surrounding academic educational issues.
- Promote your child's academic endeavors and seek support from others when needed.
- Provide positive feedback on issues surrounding education.
The link above is a response that I received back from one of our United States Senators after I sent him an email asking about his views on online education. This is an excellent exercise that you could let you kids participate in.
I also published a podcast this week that is entitled "It all starts at home!" Please take a listen as I share a few tips that will empower you and your children as it relates to their education.
I would offer to you that the first place that we motivate "I don't care", is at home. Let us all do our part setting new trends and establishing great models for our kids to follow.
You failed.....OK, get back on then!
I am convinced that most of the "I don't care" attitude can be attributed to a culture of young people that are afraid to fail. After all, we have created an educational system that tells them that everything rides on their passing and failing. Then, adults in their lives do a terrible job by power tripping on them and not creating sufficient opportunities to succeed. We must reconcile this!
As parents, we must be willing to let our children fail. We must support them with words of encouragement and lead by our positive examples. In doing all of this you may just discover that youth today are just as afraid of success as they are failure. Share with them that success is part of failure. Failure is part of success. The only way to master both of these is through education and experience.
Can Education become trendy?
This journey continues to be a difficult one. Education often times gives way to test scores, power and money. So, can education become trendy? I believe that it requires a concerted effort on all our parts to promote education daily. Share a comment about your children or grandchildren's experiences in the classroom. Seek suggestions and solutions in open forums (social media) so that others may see that they face similar and manageable problems. After all, many of the topics and discussions that we do post comments about on social media could often be promoted, enhanced, resolved and/or rectified through a more educated community. I know that I must continue to write blogs, record podcasts, and use social media to promote the value of education. I welcome your comments on any Mind Over Tutors' posts. We must generate more dialogue, in order to understand more clearly the problems, before we can offer viable solutions.
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