Teaching/ Learning

Teachers have to reinforce students, inspire them with motivation, and teach them with authenticity.
Reinforce them. Reinforce students to make them “love to learn”. Reinforcement helps in improving students’ achievements and learning. Students always need an extra push to keep on the track. So we as teachers have to add some flavor of reinforcement where it fits. Instead of telling the students about their negatives, we can show them that their positives are more and we can say instead of negatives, the areas that we can work on. Also we can turn the negative feedback into positive ones that students may benefit from. In fact, adults always want to hear that praise, then how about students? How about little kids? How about special case students? How about that young kid that needs one word to move on? Reinforcement leads to motivation which is the second important part in my philosophical statement.
We as teachers have to inspire students with motivation. The teacher should create and build motivation in each and every child. We have to inspire students to do more than they have to, not because we want them to do so but because they have the complete desire to do it. Indeed we have to empower the students and let them believe that they can reach what they want. Based on research, when we want the
students to be empowered, we have to ask them three questions; can you do it? Will it work? Is it worth it? When the students answer the following questions with “Yes”, then they are motivated. Teachers have to show students that they can do it to make them motivated. For instance instead of writing a “B+” on a student’s exam, why don’t we write “A-“? We as teachers have to show students that nothing is impossible and miracles can happen. When we as teachers see the glass half – full and neglect the glass half – empty, we are able to build up what we call the intrinsic motivation that needed to be there in the students hearts. In order to build motivation we need to teach students with authenticity.
Leaning should be related to the students’ real lives. We as teachers need to show students that schools are not in isolation from their homes and societies. Everything we teach should be linked with the students’ real lives. Moreover, to make learning more meaningful we need to teach students that everything they learn at schools can be used later on in their life journeys.
Finally, as a future teacher, I have to reinforce and to relate learning to reality in order to intrinsically motivate students. Actually, there is no elevator to have successful students, we have to take the stairs.