Why should we make our work meaningful to the best possible level - even by running the extra mile? The way to motivate ourselves! This can even be applied to our learning as well - learn not merely to pass exams/tests but for learning per se.
https://www.keystepmedia.com/leaders-coaches-purpose-work/
You have to feel that you are doing some good or you are just collecting a check. At the university I have an opportunity to contribute to the education of the next generation.
Purpose constitute value of the competences being learned, and the perceived value is essential for learning.
If your goal is to get into college, working hard may produce the grades necessary to get into a better school, get financial aid, and feel prepared when you take your first college classes.
If your goal is not college, there are a couple reasons you should still try to learn something:
In either case, high school may be the last time that a teacher cares about whether you pass or fail and will take the time to help you learn the material. I'm not saying that college professors don't care about their students; it's just that they expect a certain level of skill, and students who require a lot of remediation usually don't last -- or they end up taking remedial courses, i.e. classes you pay for, but don't count towards your degree. In general, high school teachers are focused on students and their learning needs (because this is how they are evaluated); college professors are focused more on the content they are teaching.
Many a times ‘education’ is imposed as a means to get ‘educated’ .
passion Creates self motivation. It is essential to find the passion of children and have group activities related to their passion.
these May be extracurricula.
I advocate mediated learning. The mediator has to understand every students requirement. It is difficult for teachers in school to actually implement any new method. They have their own life and pressures making it more challenging to create material relevant to the curriculum. This leaves only one option that is to follow the text books only....
Hi, Poomima,
I agree that passion creates self-motivation, but I believe that educators do have a responsibility to expose students to different things. If I am not exposed to different things, how will I know whether I would be passionate about some things. So what would be a student's requirement, if you exclude necessary physical and psychological development? When I was in high school, I regretted that I was not allowed to pursue technical drawing and woodwork because my matriculation grades to high school suggested to the authorities that I would do better focusing on grammar studies rather than vocational pursuits. The sad thing is that while I was kept from pursuing my desires because of the system, I had to endure a history course and that of Latin and Greek that were not presented to me as having future value. I ended up dropping those courses, and considered my experience a waste of precious time.
To give credit to those teachers who actually think about the development of their students, I think that teachers should be allowed to follow their passions and experiment with new methods that promote student development. Since not all students learn the same way, new methods may be of benefit to students who don't learn best through conventional ways. I do agree with you too that the pressures of life, and in many cases the pressures of the administrative aspect of teaching, is a major hurdle in promoting the innovativeness of teachers.
Thanks, gentlemen, for that article. I quite agree that if students think that what they are being taught does not really matter, we are doing a disservice. It seems to me though that teachers need to embrace innovation if they are going to facilitate innovation in students. Here in Florida, part of the challenge for teachers is that they are overworked, not to develop innovative approaches to teaching but with too much administrative requirements that severely limit their time to become the expert facilitators that so many want to be. Sadly, this is affected in part by the decisions of bureaucrats and politicians.
Hi Chandana.
I interpret the question to mean (a) for each individual worker (b) for, in and throughout the workplace organisation (school). It could also lead to considerations of the purpose(s) of schooling which I am researching but will not include here. Individual workers have personal purposes - on a spectrum perhaps - from survival and family responsibility to more abstract senses of meaning and value, of being understood, appreciated, of opportunity. Work, school can be a person's 'vocation', or raison d'être, reason for getting up in the morning. A former colleague would respond to the daily question: How are you? with "Reluctant and unwilling!" [He was partly joking]. Individuals can have powerful purposes in spite of or different from the purpose(s) of the organisation. However workers find a lack of sense of purpose in and of the organisation and its culture, or a purpose they can't identify with, frustrating, and demeaning of their own sense of belonging and work satisfaction. Some workers recently asked for a statement of the purposes of the small company they are trying to market. (Constantly) "going the extra mile" may be a function of individual temperament, or the sense of identification with the purpose of organisation or school and its culture is so strong, it drives individuals and groups of individuals to work above and beyond. Best N
I assume that by cultivating motivation, vision, purpose, we have the opportunity to make a difference and even promote our own new ideas and have them implemented, evaluated, shared. This is not easy, yet it is possible.
You have to feel that you are doing some good or you are just collecting a check. At the university I have an opportunity to contribute to the education of the next generation.
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