MOTIVATION

Lack of motivation seemed to occur the most when I was in Spanish IV my senior year of high school. I lacked motivation on nearly every assignment because it felt like no matter how hard I tried or how often I came in for help my answers would still be wrong. The point at which I lost almost all motivation was when I would have the exact answer as the student next to me and he would get it right and I got it wrong. When I brought this to the attention of my teacher she said that he just got lucky. When this kept occurring I did not even bother talking to her about it and basically did not even want to open my mouth in class. This experience turned me into the type of student I had never been before, a student who had shut down. I was only like that in this particular class and the only thing that motivated me to try at all was that fact that I could fail, something I had never come close to doing.
I believe I can help students overcome a lack of motivation by staying consistent in my practices and showing that I care by investing time in their success. At our field site there is one student in particular who seems to lack motivation and does not even consider herself an artist. Once I confronted her claim of not being an artist by pointing out her series of successful portraits as well as her on going practice outside of school she began to see that she was not only an artist, but an artist with a body of work to be proud of. I asked her to bring in some of her photographs from home and the day she did, a group of students came over and started going through her work and lavishing her with the compliments she deserved. Her work was good, plain and simple. It took telling her that she has talent and the confirmation from her peers to get the student to see that she is a skilled artist, particularly in photography, that should continue her practice in the classroom.