Motivating Students - Connecting with their Interests

“There are three important things to remember about education. The first one is motivation, the second is motivation, and the third is motivation.”
—Terrell Bell, former U.S. Secretary of Education

Most people would agree that teachers “teach” students, and that is how students learn. But this way of thinking doesn’t reflect the realities of how learning happens. It’s more accurate to say that teachers motivate students, guide them, help them, and create a safe, supportive environment in which they can learn. The learning, though, is ultimately up to each individual student. It’s a bit like the old adage: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink." Well, you can guide a student to knowledge, but you can’t make him learn. For him to learn, he must be motivated.

The students who are motivated from the first day of school are often the most accomplished students. These are students who see a connection between educational achievement and success in life or who are from families or cultures where education is emphasized. But what about all the others? Those who lack significant parental involvement or ignore it? Those who don’t see how learning to identify a gerund could possible affect their lives? These are the students who struggle, who challenge us as teachers and who threaten to undermine the positive learning environment that we seek to create in our classrooms.

Many accomplished teachers will tell you the same thing that research has shown: We must motivate these students as we teach them. And one of the most successful ways of motivating students is by connecting with their interests.

Determine What Your Students Like

The first step in connecting with their interests is to find out what those interests are. There are a few ways of getting this information.

1. Talk with your students.
Whether before class, after class, or during class, get a sense of what they like talking about, what they spend their free time doing. Not only does this allow you to collect information that you can use later, it also shows that you are interested. Students will respond positively when they feel that you have an active interest in their lives and respect the things they enjoy. Some teachers find it useful to eat lunch with a small group of students once a week.

2. Have your students complete an Interest Survey.
Find out what your students enjoy, what they spend their time outside of class doing, and what they’re passionate about. You can create your own survey, or use ours.

Different strokes for different folks.

Creating Lessons that Captivate Your Students

Once you have figured out that some of your students are crazy about football, while others go nuts for fashion, you need to use that information to your advantage. There are three major ways to use this info.

1. Create lesson plans based on the topic of interest.
This is easier in some subject areas than it is in others, but it can adapted for any class or topic. It’s crucial to note that if connecting to the students’ interests ever proves too much a distraction (if mentioning Kanye West makes the students go crazy and stop paying attention), you’ll need to find a more subtle way of doing it. Maintaining control of the classroom is key. Here are some sample ideas, based on subject area:

English Language Arts – Allow your students to write 5 paragraph essays on topics that interest them: concussions in football, censorship on television, violence in hip-hop, etc. When using example sentences on the board, have those sentences connect to the things students are passionate about; don’t use “Dick” and “Jane,” use “Taylor Swift” and “Lil’ Wayne.”

Social Studies – Create parallels between historical events and themes and contemporary ones. Some of the easiest ways to do this is to take a historical event that has been reimagined or reappropriated and discuss the differences. Anybody know the name of Jay-Z’s record company? “Roc-a-fella.” Now let’s learn about John D. Rockefeller, the man that Jay-Z named his company after.

Math and Science – This involves a combination of real-world examples and using the names of artists and celebrities that kids like. Teaching the students about human cells? Why not grab their attention by saying that the cell you are studying looks just like one in Peyton Manning’s arm? Teaching them Euclidian geometry? Why not have them determine which phone booth is closer for Neo to use to get out of The Matrix? Word problems in math and science can easily be adapted to fit scenarios that interest students.

2. Set “motivation traps.”
This works best when a particular student is struggling or falling behind. Determine that student’s interests and create an intervention lesson or task for that student based on those interests. A paper by Donna Ford (et al.) describes various types of “traps” that can be set, including “hero traps,” “fetish traps,” “classroom club traps,” and “emotional and social need traps.” The choice of the word “trap” may not be ideal, but the concept can be useful.

3. Name drop.
Finally, mentioning subjects or individuals that students are interested in, even in an off-hand way, can boost the level of attention in the classroom. If you have a student who is obsessed with the hip-hop artist Drake – it may be worthwhile to google “Drake” and listen to one of his songs. That way, once you tell the students how awesome Newton’s third law is, you can say, “and like a sprained ankle, that ain’t nothing to play with.” Any Drake fans in your classroom will think you’re amazing.

Of course there are many other techniques for motivating students including: positive feedback, matching the difficulity of the task with the ability level of the child, extrinsic rewards, and motivation modeling. We hope this overview will open your mind to new ways of motivating your students. Have any comments about these lesson ideas? To share your story or comments with us, send an email to blake{at}flocabulary.com.