Fortino Tafoya Essays (759 words) - Education, Psychology

Fortino Tafoya EDUC-113 Garcia 5-12-18 "How to Motivate Learning: Alternatives to Rewards" Reflection Educators have a responsibility to students that is separate from simply creating a space where they are comfortable and happy. As educators, we have a responsibility to challenge, hold accountable, pay attention to, modify, and adapt for our students. That is not to say we should shy away from our other responsibility, the responsibility to care for and foster our students. Dr. Richard Curwin understands these responsibilities with the professional clarity that only comes from a teacher who cares for his students learning and has been caring about their learning over their total comfort for a long time. His blog post, "How to Motivate Learning: Alternatives to Rewards" he details briefly his reasons for not using rewards or incentive-based learning in his classroom, then goes on to offer three alternatives to using rewards that are honest, caring and put learning and challenging students first, rather than using a reward or treat to get them to perform. Reading Curwin's article made me think about Pavlovian methods of behavior modification and why we use rewards in the first place. In fact, he frames his three suggestions as the necessary result of telling teachers to take away rewards in his other article, "Why Giving Bonus Money to Better Teachers Is Wrong." If you are going to take something away you must replace it with something, this is basic behavior modification strategy that he is using on his readers. But it also illustrates the way that reward systems and behavior modification can be boring and feel routine. In our EDUC-113 class, professor Garcia has gone over the use of rewards and incentives in our classrooms and one of the biggest takeaways I received was the idea to use the rules themselves as an incentive. Allowing students to create their own policies and rules if they can display proper behavior seems like a brilliant idea to me and one that can "show appreciation," "introduce an appropriate challenge" and "show genuine care", these are all three of Curwin's suggestions being used together combining an incentive with a rule - genius! I see myself using this strategy and reward in my own classrooms in the future. It is my goal to work with my junior high or high school students on understanding each other: my expectations, their own capacity for self-control and responsibility to let them create their own class rules and procedures for things like walking into class, talking during class, taking turns, how to form groups, etc. Other than this incentive and structured extra credit opportunities, I do not plan on using many incentives in my classroom. One key point in Curwin's article is when he mentions showing appreciation as an alternative to rewards, which use manipulation. I latched on to this when I remembered an example I had while substitute teaching in an 8th grade English class. A student was doing more talking than working and we had a collaborative assignment where students read stories and shared the story they read with a group then they all reflected in writing on the stories. This student hardly wrote anything on the page. I could have offered a reward if the student would finish but instead I noticed the boys perfect handwriting. I asked the student where he was at in the assignment then complimented him on his amazingly neat and clear handwriting. He was taken back a bit but then he said thank you, no one had ever complimented his hand writing before. This student was also a disabled student whose other hand did not have any fingers. I felt that this bit of appreciation was more powerful than an extra 5 minute s of lunch or a treat, because the student was smiling, felt proud and then almost completed the assignment. Small examples like this are way that show the huge power of appreciation over a reward. That student and I also made a connection as I was the first person to notice and compliment something about them. I truly believe Curwin's main point, that teacher's have a deeper responsibility to students is expressed in his desire to connect with and understand his students. The use of appreciation, analyzing