Kids: Don't you just love them!

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Motivating kids can be both fun and challenging. But Teenagers do drive me to despair sometimes, because they don't seem interested in anything!

Kenneth

[admin]

Kids are cute as long as they don't play basketball in the house. But let me get serious. Last summer a "teenager" (16 years old) came to live with us for a month. It was absolutely frustrating to witness firsthand the childish interests: immature Hong Kong comedies and online bam-bam video games.

How can you motivate a kid toward "something greater"? Am I being snobbish or remembering my own youth through a rosy shade? I recall being an avid book reader even as a pre-teen, and I loved going to the movies. To this day I don't really enjoy video games, even though I grew up in the age of pinball and PacMan.

Perhaps I'm just getting too damned old. So, how do we motivate our young students?

Tim Fox

[larry]

After teaching junior and senior high school or "middle" school kids in Korea for a summer camp, I really found it much different from teaching either International Students in Canada or College students both in Korea and China. I think that the topics had to be relevant,  classroom discipline had to be no nonsense stuff and a load of enthusiasm and fresh ideas always seems to be the answer, regardless of age. Establishing teacher/student relationships and positive group dynamics is an art that I am getting pretty good at, but it seems that one failure sticks out more than all the successes.

As for teens and free time, I can only thing of my own days of growing up in the late 60's and I don't want to tell you what we were doing. Let them go and find out for themselves, within reason seems to work for me, after having 3 teens of my own.It is tough to detach with love.

Larry

[deezy]

As a teenager in the sixties myself, I remember (just!) sneaking out of the house to go down to the local coffee bar, sharing a bottle of coke with a girlfriend and feeling really grownup amongst the 'bikies'.  That was the sum total of excitement for me then...school was intensive, hard work, lots of homework, and discipline!   We didn't DARE not do our studies.  

Not long ago I showed some eighteen year old students in Australia my "O" level exams, which I took (and passed) when I was 15.  They couldn't do them.  Too hard, they said!   Does this tell us anything?

Motivation?  Here in China, some of the teenagers appear to be under a lot of pressure to 'pass' exams, others seem to have just 'given up', and don't seem at all motivated.   But last year I taught at a summer school in England, and the teenagers at that school (who all came from rich families!) were highly motivated, especially the German students.  They even complained that I didn't give them enough homework!  

My own children, who are now in their early thirties, could not have been different.  My daughter, I was told, was University 'material', but she just didn't want to work, left school as soon as she could, and it was another 10 years before she decided she was wasting her intelligence, and became a mature student.  My son was highly motivated, worked really hard, got his degree, and is now a highly successful fashion photographer in London...something he wanted to do from a very young age.  

He had a goal to aim for.  She didn't - not until she had a son to support.  Maybe that's the problem.  Nowadays, it's harder to get a job, harder to get onto a career ladder, and some kids just seem aimless.

[plarz]

Larry, thanks for reminding us that engagement and discipline are two things we must have in our classrooms.  And thanks, Deezy for reminding us that teenagers are in the rebelious mode, by default.  It does seem to me that the social milleaux frames the type of rebellion that teens engage in, and that society accepts.
     Here in NYS our board of Regents recently revised the Math Curriculum.  Beginning next school year fifth graders will be required to do algebra.  Quadratic equations will be on tap for 8th graders!  My internal response was what about readiness?  In the rush to get our students on top of the industrialized nations' learners, educational practices are changing to introduce harder concepts at earlier ages, it seems to me.  I shared this with a colleague here and she offered a point I didn't know, but felt was worthwhile.  It went like this:
     Japan, after the second World War, wanted the secret to our nation's success.  Being a religious people, they asked the US to send missionaries, thinking that our ability to win was a matter of our God being stronger than their god.  The response on our part was not that great, so they decided to investigate for themselves.  They surmized that because Americans spent so much time on the job and in school that those two things must have been the key to our success.  So they made work and school very important.  The culture supported it!
     I don't think that more difficult material at earlier ages, or longer school years is the answer, unless the culture supports it.  Working Americans still work hard, often not giving themselves enough R&R, but I think that entertainment is more highly valued now.  I don't see how that value advances more significant educational demands.  I look forward to your responses.  Think about that in terms of motivation!