Class Makeover & Science of Motivation

As I was looking at the titles of the TED videos for one of our class assignments.  The two that jumped out at me were "Math Class Needs a Makeover" and "The Surprising Science of Motivation".  When I first saw these titles, I almost became a little giddy, thinking ohh maybe these videos will give me some great insight on how to best reach my underachieving math students. These are my students who are capable of being successful in math class but choose not to be engaged, not do their practice, and therefore are not successful in math.

Both of these videos have a similar message in that overall as humans we function better when we are motivated intrinsically to find a solution.  When the problems we are faced with truly have purpose people/students perform, think, and problem solve better.  Life problems/questions do not come to us with all of the pieces neatly layed out for us to plug into a given equation.  The piece we are missing in our math curriculum is the problem solving piece.  Dan Meyer does a great job of taking a math problem from the textbook and turning it into a real-life problem, where all of the needed information is not given, students have to figure out what information is essential and find the needed pieces of to solve the problem they are presented.  These real world problems make math class purposeful therefore engaging and intrinsically motivating to the otherwise unengaged student.  Ideally, this is fantastic.  Both videos touch base the importance of letting the employee/student have a significant role in the problem solving and creativity piece.  I would love to teach this way all of the time, which would produce society members that would help solidify our future community.  

However, as an educator and some employers have the reality of the "real world" staring them in the face.  Not all facets of life lend itself to the lack of time restraints.  There are many jobs in the "real world" where we can not say, show up when you want, get the job on your own terms and timeline.  In the business world, there are some jobs that require employees to be present at a certain time and to be sure that particular tasks get accomplished in that time frame.  I do believe that some flexibility can be initiated to build moral and trust among employer and employee.  If the employee does feel they are a significant part of the automony of the business they work for, they will perform better.  However, changes need to begin transpiring from the owners/leaders of the company on down.  Business owners should be in seminars like this.

The reality of my "real world" in the classroom are the expectations of standardized testing and its timeline confinements.  I would love to "rewrite" my curriculum to teach my students to become problem writers and solvers.  However, one I don't have enough time in the day and two that is not the expectation of my administrators.  So we are torn between what is truly best for student learning and what we are told we need to teach by a specific date.  

These two videos overall are a great discussion and eye opener to what needs to happen to begin to create true problem-solving, creative, engaged, successful students in our classroom. This is a discussion that needs to be taking place far above me.  However, I am going to begin incorporating these types of problems solving situations for my students.  I still have to teach the specified curriculum but I can enhance it with these "real world" problems.  I will use the available technology to assist me.