“A teacher affects eternity he (she) can never tell where his (her) influence stops.”—Henry Adams
Teaching is a rewarding and demanding profession and has the power to shape America’s future. Teaching today demands more than just caring about children and knowing one’s subject well. Teachers need to find out what motivates children, how to diagnose students’ strengths and weaknesses, and how to create environments in which children thrive.
My fiancé has a son that is in the third grade but struggles to make it to the next grade. I have the passion of teaching new things to anyone no matter the age. It makes me feel great that I am able to pass my knowledge on to someone else and see their eyes light up once there is understanding. I wondered why he was always having problems in every subject area except for math. I realized that math did not require reading and comprehending. This little boy does not understand what he is reading and does not know the meanings of words. I did not want him to continue to just make it to the next grade level without understanding the material in the grade he is currently in because it only gets harder. I sit with him everyday after school to go over his work and also got him a dictionary so that if there is a word that he does not understand he can look it up and familiarize himself with the meaning. He is showing a bit of progress and every time I see that my helping him has made a difference in his work I know that I have done my job. It just gives me great pleasure when I have helped someone achieve a goal.
Parents and teachers are pulling out their hair trying to understand why students seem less and less interested in school and school work. Perhaps part of the problem is the lack of understanding of what really motivates students. Motivation is generally understood as what arouses and sustains a particular behavior. For school purposes there are two types extrinsic and intrinsic...