Displaying items by tag: Stephen Covey

Teaching Tips 5-7 described the creation of a Class Mission Statement and explained how this founding document can be used throughout the year to establish a sense of purpose in our rooms.  Later in the year, we can follow up this initial effort with the creation of personal mission statements.  Participating in this powerful exercise promises to help students better understand the purposes of their learning, improve their behavior, work with greater motivation and enthusiasm, and find greater meaning in their work.  I simply cannot imagine myself teaching without this tool.

The Teaching Tips will focus on the topic of personal mission statements for the next three weeks.

Week 1: Introducing the Personal Mission Statement
Week 2: A Step-by-Step Process for Creating a Personal Mission Statement
Week 3: Personal Mission Boxes

Teaching Tips 5-7 described the creation of a Class Mission Statement and explained how this founding document can be used throughout the year to establish a sense of purpose in our rooms.  Later in the year, we can follow up this initial effort with the creation of personal mission statements.  Participating in this powerful exercise promises to help students better understand the purposes of their learning, improve their behavior, work with greater motivation and enthusiasm, and find greater meaning in their work.  I simply cannot imagine myself teaching without this tool.

The Teaching Tips will focus on the topic of personal mission statements for the next three weeks.

Week 1: Introducing the Personal Mission Statement
Week 2: A Step-by-Step Process for Creating a Personal Mission Statement
Week 3: Personal Mission Boxes

Teaching Tips 5-7 described the creation of a Class Mission Statement and explained how this founding document can be used throughout the year to establish a sense of purpose in our rooms.  Later in the year, we can follow up this initial effort with the creation of personal mission statements.  Participating in this powerful exercise promises to help students better understand the purposes of their learning, improve their behavior, work with greater motivation and enthusiasm, and find greater meaning in their work.  I simply cannot imagine myself teaching without this tool.

The Teaching Tips will focus on the topic of personal mission statements for the next three weeks.

Week 1: Introducing the Personal Mission Statement
Week 2: A Step-by-Step Process for Creating a Personal Mission Statement
Week 3: Personal Mission Boxes

Introduction

This blog series continues with a description of the 9th force (out of 10) I have identified that brings out the best in children by appealing to the best in them.

Instead of trying to gain temporary obedience from our students through the use of rewards and punishments, these forces help us in our attempts to win our students’ hearts and minds and enlist a genuine commitment to the worthwhile aims and objectives we are trying to promote in our classrooms.

Introduction

This blog series rolls on with a description of the 8th force (out of 10) I have identified that brings out the best in children by appealing to the best in them.

Instead of trying to gain temporary obedience from our students through the use of rewards and punishments, these forces help us in our attempts to win our students’ hearts and minds and enlist a genuine commitment to the worthwhile aims and objectives we are trying to promote in our classrooms.

 Because of the many problems associated with using rewards and punishments in the classroom, it becomes clear that neither rewarding nor punishing students offers teachers a management approach consistent with quality principles.  The choice that so many educators face of whether to emphasize punishments or rewards in their classrooms is not really a choice at all.  Both methods are extrinsic.  Both seek to control the actions of students based on the promise that if you do this, this will happen to you, and, as a result, present a similar array of problems.  Both rest on the assumptions of Theory X put forth by Douglas McGregor (described in Blog Post #5), and both exist because they are believed to be necessary to maintain order and effort.

In my most recent posts I have been talking about the choices we have available to us when it comes to managing our students.  One choice is rooted in Douglas McGragor’s Theory X (described in previous post) and requires the use of rewards and/or punishments to control student behavior and effort due to the belief  that students dislike work and will avoid it if they can.  The other choice is rooted in Theory Y and takes advantage of the idea that students want to work hard and will commit themselves fully to objectives that mean something to them.

In my most recent blog post I described the two main choices we have as teachers in managing our students.  The first choice is the most traditional and the most common, and it relies on the use of extrinsic motivation, namely rewards and punishments.  Though this choice is the one most of us learn in our credential programs, read about in our textbooks, and observe in our student teaching assignments, extrinsic motivation does nothing more than produce temporary obedience and carries with it a large cost because it undermines many of the worthwhile ideals and priorities we strive to promote in our classrooms.