Throughout this class, I have been thinking a lot about my own personal motivation and the strategies I use to motivate myself. I have always considered myself a motivated person; I am a hard worker, a go-getter, and pretty stubborn. My favorite form of motivation is proving someone wrong when they tell me I can’t do something. I am also pretty competitive with myself; I like to push myself harder and accomplish more.
I also understand the fact that I am both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated. I have a mastery and a performance goal orientation. For example, most of the time I have a deep desire to be a better teacher, but sometimes it’s all about teaching the best lesson I possibly can so that I can get a great evaluation. I am getting my Master’s degree because I love learning and being in school, but I can’t deny that the extrinsic motivator of getting a pay raise factored into my decision. Honestly, at the points when I have felt like quitting and just forgetting about my Master’s—you know, those early Saturday mornings when you know you’re going to spend the whole day stuck in the classroom—it’s been the extrinsic, not the intrinsic motivators that have kept me going.
Recently, I learned the value of being motivated both by intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. I have always been one of those slightly obnoxiously motivated morning people. I like to start the day out on a positive note; pop out of bed early, go to the gym, shower, eat a good breakfast, get to work early, and greet my students with lots of positive energy. I have always been intrinsically motivated to do this because it makes me feel so good and really contributes to my overall happiness. When I am ready for bed at 9 pm, like an 80 year-old, I am reminded of how fantastic my routine makes me feel. Then, about three months ago I fell while running, fractured my arm and was stuck in a cast. I was in tons of pain, drugged out on Percocet, and I couldn’t even find the motivation to get out of bed. Truthfully, I went from someone who had never once used the sleep button on the alarm, to someone who pushed the sleep button for over an hour (my husband loved it!). I would roll out of bed, throw my hair up in a ponytail and head to work. I was miserable. It took me a few days to realize that if I was ever going to make it through this, I was going to have to come up with a new plan. I started bargaining with myself –-- “ If you get out of bed and into the shower, you can stop at Starbucks on the way to work” or “If you actually pack a lunch to bring to school, you can bring along a dessert”. It was like bargaining with a little kid! I think I was in 3rd grade the last time I hadn’t wanted to take a shower, but here I was, a 26 year-old woman having to reward myself for showering. Silly as it felt, it worked well and it got me through a very rough period in my life. Now I have gone back to being intrinsically motivated to wake up in the morning, but I am not sure I would have made it through the end of the school year without knowing how to use extrinsic motivators.
I feel like research has made the use of extrinsic motivators in the classroom out to be something terrible. All the literature seems to frown upon extrinsic motivators, but I definitely see that there is a time and place to use them. Provided, I understand that kids that are only motivated by extrinsic sources aren’t going to get too far in life, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t learn to balance intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.
Liz, thanks for sharing your evaluation of your motivation style. It was so interesting to read and I found a number of personal parallels. When I was a senior in college, I tore my left ACL the first day of practice in my final basketball season. It was obviously a horrific experience and I went through a similar change to the one you described. I lost the motivation to do things that I had intrinsically enjoyed before the accident. Also similar to you, I would use little external gifts to myself to work up the courage to go to class, write papers, and even walk to the dining hall. I think this “little voice” we develop in our head is crucial.
ReplyDeleteOur ability to set goals for ourselves and reward dedicated behavior is fascinating and effective. In my experience I have found that my kids rarely do this and they think it is soooooo cool that I do. I often share with them my personal line of reasoning, for example, I’ll eat two huge breakfast tacos before class starts and explain to students that it’s my reward for my 10-mile bike ride to school each morning. They love my little personal rewards and they learn from it. The pick up on the types of behaviors I reward myself for and the types of rewards I give myself. They also see how proud and content I am after I accomplish something, and how much easier it gets to do something the more you do it. For example, by the end of the year bike riding to school was no big deal and no longer a task I needed to work up the effort and reward myself for. Before spring break my students asked me what my plans were for the vacation and I told to them that I was going to be staying home. I explained that I had not cleaned the house, taken care of bills, and fulfilled my other obligations; therefore I couldn’t justify rewarding myself with a trip. The idea of withholding rewards was foreign for most of them.
I gave the students opportunities during our advisory program to build this inner thought and reward cycle that we adults employ. I asked them what major tasks they had to do each week, and together we brainstormed small rewards they could treat themselves with if they accomplished it. Rewards like going to the movies, or buying a snack at the school store. It was so revolutionary in class for two reasons. First, I was normally the one to provide the extrinsic motivation when necessary, having them create and give themselves the rewards was far more effective. Second, I hadn’t taught them how to set goals and reward themselves, I had just done it for them, by giving them this strategy, and I think that I changed the way they will act in the future. Teaching students to have an “inner voice” and create small rewards for themselves is a way we can really impact their motivational patterns.