In the post titled, “Loving the Unlovable Student”, Mr. Prater notes a point in his teaching career when he truly became a better teacher. In this post he talks about, him receiving the rosters for his new class and that he notices that all of them are tenth grade and above, except he is teaching a 9th grade class. Mr. Prater automatically realizes that this class contain nothing but students that have failed. Mr. Prater eventually decides to embrace the experience and surround these students with encouragements and offer them a clean slate. In the end he comes out learning so much from the experience and is happy that he had it. Mr. Prater discovered that many of these students already had labeled themselves as failures so everyone else did as well. Mr. Prater opened a new door for these students by giving them a chance.
My Comment
I loved reading this article. I am going into secondary special education and the question I get asked most often is, "why?". I always give the same reply, "why not?". The students that you talked about in your article are the students that I will be teaching daily. I feel as if these students need a passionate and dedicated teacher just as much as any other student; if not more. These students will most likely not have much support at home and if they do then they can always use more. Teaching is a challenge no matter what subject or who your students are. Your assistant principal gave you the advice you needed most and now you are sharing it with many others.
Mr. Prater’s Post
The title of this post was, “Motivate Students to Learn Without Rewards”. In this post Mr. Prater talks about how so many students will only complete a task if they know that they get something in return. The problem with this is most teachers use physical rewards. This type of reward does motivate students but it is only temporary. He goes on to discuss that we as teachers need tp think back to those teachers that truly made a difference in our lives and what they did. The answer from most of us would be they got to know us and actually cared that we would succeed in life. Mr. Prater also recommends that we always show excitement when it comes to learning. We should show excitement in what we are teaching, what our students teach us, and when they learn something new. Lastly we need to remember to challenge our students. If the challenge is to easy they will become bored. If the challenge is to difficult they will become frustrated. Mr. Prater really had some strong thoughts and ideas that we should all keep in mind as educators.
My Comment
I really enjoyed this post, and I felt as if it was directly aimed towards me. Working in a daycare where most 2 year olds will only work for a reward can sometimes be draining, In the younger classes they are taught they get skittles if they go to the potty. In my class we have to break them of the skittle reward. If they do a task I ask the comment soon after is, "can I have a skittle". I truly want to motivate them without the rewards in a physical aspect and it truly makes my done when a student performs a task without wanting anything but praise in return.
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