Pawn to Origin
Laurie L Bower discussed the motivational style of teaching in the chapter, “In our own voice”. As a teacher how we can motivate our students to enjoy their writing classroom and motivate them intrinsically are the main points of discussion. Now one may ask, why do we need to motivate when students are already in the classroom, submitting assignments regularly and getting out with pass marks? So, here you go with the answer-
Because a large number of students enrolled in the composition class because they are compelled to do so. They join the class with a negative attitude towards writing. Though writing is all about practicing, they think that successful writers are born with the blessings of writing power. So, they do the writing class reluctantly. They are completely unaware of the joy of writing. However, encouraging a positive attitude in students may rediscover the joy in writing among them. Man has an innate desire to learn (Aristotle) which gives the hope that we can bring changes to the attitude of these students. We can provoke their intrinsic motivation to learning discouraging extrinsic motivation.
Richard De Charms Introduced ‘pawn’ and ‘origin’ in his book “Enchanting motivation”(1976) to refer to these two different types of students.
Pawns are the type of students who are extrinsically motivated whose end goal is getting a degree to get a good job. On the contrary, we will also get some students in our classroom who are intrinsically motivated and named as origins here. Origins are the group of students who are self-motivated and they join the classroom with full enthusiasm and energy. Nevertheless, the facilitator can’t just account for those origins. It’s our responsibility to turn those pawns into origins. Now, the question arises, how we can do that?
Creating a safe environment, initiating fun writing exercises, and having them evaluate themselves, some favorable writing attitudes can be fostered. First of all, we have to convince them they are writers.
This chapter gives some tips on that.
1. Introducing free writing- The author suggested the teachers to be the model in classroom. So that students get motivated to write seeing their teacher doing free writing along with them. When they will see teachers making mistakes, writing nonsense sentences, misspelling words, missing punctuation may inspire them to do so.
2. The strategic use of praise- However, the author emphasized on the timely use of praise. Though acknowledging someone’s work and giving recognition of success(even light one) lessen the anxiety and help to boost up, again too much praise too soon can be detrimental to motivation.
3. The use of personal writing- Personal essay can be easy and a self- directed start for them. They will enjoy writing when they will advocate their own voice. David Bartholme criticized this one though.
4.Peer Workshopping - This one is a great way to get students connected with their peers and to get them helped.
5.Modeling imperfection and
6.Allowing failure
Imperfections are the base of perfections. So, if we model some papers which are not up to the mark and show them the transition from that paper to the better one, that might remove that fear from their mind and assure them that they are not the only one. Every single writer goes through the same process. However, allowing for failure and giving them a chance to revise and do better will encourage them to think critically. However, writing is a process.
In your classroom which one worked better? How can we facilitate these in our online classes? Might these mislead the students to any extent?
Because a large number of students enrolled in the composition class because they are compelled to do so. They join the class with a negative attitude towards writing. Though writing is all about practicing, they think that successful writers are born with the blessings of writing power. So, they do the writing class reluctantly. They are completely unaware of the joy of writing. However, encouraging a positive attitude in students may rediscover the joy in writing among them. Man has an innate desire to learn (Aristotle) which gives the hope that we can bring changes to the attitude of these students. We can provoke their intrinsic motivation to learning discouraging extrinsic motivation.
Richard De Charms Introduced ‘pawn’ and ‘origin’ in his book “Enchanting motivation”(1976) to refer to these two different types of students.
Pawns are the type of students who are extrinsically motivated whose end goal is getting a degree to get a good job. On the contrary, we will also get some students in our classroom who are intrinsically motivated and named as origins here. Origins are the group of students who are self-motivated and they join the classroom with full enthusiasm and energy. Nevertheless, the facilitator can’t just account for those origins. It’s our responsibility to turn those pawns into origins. Now, the question arises, how we can do that?
Creating a safe environment, initiating fun writing exercises, and having them evaluate themselves, some favorable writing attitudes can be fostered. First of all, we have to convince them they are writers.
This chapter gives some tips on that.
1. Introducing free writing- The author suggested the teachers to be the model in classroom. So that students get motivated to write seeing their teacher doing free writing along with them. When they will see teachers making mistakes, writing nonsense sentences, misspelling words, missing punctuation may inspire them to do so.
2. The strategic use of praise- However, the author emphasized on the timely use of praise. Though acknowledging someone’s work and giving recognition of success(even light one) lessen the anxiety and help to boost up, again too much praise too soon can be detrimental to motivation.
3. The use of personal writing- Personal essay can be easy and a self- directed start for them. They will enjoy writing when they will advocate their own voice. David Bartholme criticized this one though.
4.Peer Workshopping - This one is a great way to get students connected with their peers and to get them helped.
5.Modeling imperfection and
6.Allowing failure
Imperfections are the base of perfections. So, if we model some papers which are not up to the mark and show them the transition from that paper to the better one, that might remove that fear from their mind and assure them that they are not the only one. Every single writer goes through the same process. However, allowing for failure and giving them a chance to revise and do better will encourage them to think critically. However, writing is a process.
In your classroom which one worked better? How can we facilitate these in our online classes? Might these mislead the students to any extent?
I really like Bowers' thoughts within this chapter of "In Our Own Voice" because I do worry about the students who see ENG103 and ENG104 as just another thing they are required to go through to get their degree. I really liked her final two points of modeling imperfection and allowing for failure. I think our students have been taught that failure is not an option if they want to succeed when failure should be seen as a learning opportunity. I think this goes well with process theory and allowing our students to submit rougher versions of drafts in order to get better each time. I also think its important for them to see us as human, and even as instructors of writing (who the see as "perfect writers"), we fail too. I'm very honest with my students about how hard grad school is and how I struggle to write too. I think it's important for them to be able to relate to someone who they see as a role model in writing, which a lot of the time is us.
ReplyDeleteI've tried to allow my students to motivate themselves within the classroom, as I see them as adults who, at this point, should know that sometimes you have to do things that you do not necessarily want to do. I made it clear to them during the first few weeks that I do not agree with my many of the things valued in writing (such as grammar, grading subjectively, etc.) and instead valued their unique voice above all things. I allow them to free write without me collecting their papers, which seemed to get a lot of them more motivated because they knew they were not being judged or graded. I comment about their voice coming through and how much I appreciate that on their papers as opposed to focusing on the things they are doing wrong with mechanics. I gave them the floor to talk about anything each day (back when we had in-person questions), so they knew they were a valued member of my class. I actually cried in class once talking about how proud I was of each of them during a feedback day. Showing them how much I value them, regardless of how they perform in my class, seems to have motivated them more than anything.
Natalie!
DeleteI wholeheartedly agree with you about the need to let our students see that failure is not really a failure. This is definitely something that I would like to incorporate more into my class. I am wondering if contract grading would be a good way to show this. I certainly think that allowing for multiple revisions and the portfolio-style aids in this process.
I also really like what you say about showing our students that we are humans too. I think our culture really promotes the idea that the instructor should be above students in some way, as if there needs to be a separation in order for education to occur. While it’s true that I think experience is a big part (if not all) of what allows us to learn from another person, that doesn’t mean that the instructor’s experience(s) should be privileged over those of students. We all have unique insights, we all learn from each other, and letting our students see that we are not all that different is important. I think this in itself goes a long way in motivating students (and I think that could easily be extended to me as the instructor) to get the most out of this learning experience that we are all in together.
This is just occurring to me: Maybe this switch to online is showing us all––and our students certainly if they realize it––that we are all learning together. I know this switch to online has been a somewhat steep learning curve for myself and my students. Maybe it just takes some metacognition to realize that classes which have turned bad after going online is due to the fact that the instructor just doesn’t know the technology, or the best pedagogy, or how to even cope with this whole situation? We’re just trying to figure it out together. Just a thought....
Hello Nilima! Thank you for this post. These two concepts were new to me from the reading and I appreciate that you took the time to recap them here.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you said we have to convince our students that they ARE writers. This is something that is incredibly easy to overlook. I hadn’t really thought about it this way. What I have been trying to convince my students is that there is no such thing as bad writing. Yet, maybe I need to first convince them that they are writers.
One thing I have done in my own class from this list you shared is modeling. This is something that my mentor last semester does and it has kind of stuck with me. I have shown my students a few of my own first drafts and my own process as a writer and researcher. I emphasize that this is just one way and that it might not work for them, but it could be something they would want to try out. Really what I wanted to show them was that the writing process can be incredibly messy. A lot of what we see is just the polished stuff and I want my students to realize that’s not the whole story.
One thing I have regretted not implementing is free writing. While I would love to start doing that, I worry that it wouldn’t work so well as an online activity. Would they actually do it (especially given that it is something new)? I could have them turn it in, but then they might not be so “free” with their writing knowing that someone else was going to read it. Even, I am afraid that I might get complaints about the “extra work.” This is certainly something I will integrate to my class next semester, but I’m not sure about the best thing to do right now in this regard.
I'm also in the same dillema Cassia. I don't know how to implement these ideas in online classes. Probably if the classes were synchronous, we could have incorporated those to some extent. But right now, this is really hard.
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ReplyDeleteNIlima,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned modeling papers that weren’t “up to the mark,” which is an idea I’m always very intrigued by. I wonder if you mean alongside “better” papers or simply on their own. I think the idea of normalizing failure as healthy and a part of the learning process, but I always get caught up in how to do that in a way that doesn’t mislead or “betray” students when they turn in something and I still have to stick by a set of grading standards that means they’re not going to get a great grade. I feel like it’s the equivalent of covering easy math problems in class and then showing up to the test where you’re suddenly being asked to do much harder problems. I don’t want to lull them into a false sense of security that ends up hurting their grades—which, although they shouldn’t be the most important factor, do have an influence over things like scholarships, etc.
I think a first step could be allowing revision (which I do, though not many of my students take advantage of it) so there’s not so much pressure on how well they preform on the initial “turn-in,” but does that put them in the mindset of it being a draft rather than a polished submission? Or is that not even a bad thing, as all writing can be improved and is therefore always a draft of some sort? Do all students have the time to revise and resubmit papers, or is that also expecting extra work out of them that they may not have room in their schedule for?
-Jessie
Hi Nilima!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this helpful breakdown of the chapter and asking good questions! In my classroom, I really do think encourgement has worked the best for the students who are less inclinded to be enthusiasts of writing. I love being able to point out all of the ways a student's writing is working and even let a student know, "Hey! You are a good writer. You have a really strong voice here." I think calling out specific moments where a student is doing well is what gives the less-inclined student the confidence to think "Maybe I do know what I'm doing. Maybe I can write." So many students think that writing has to be a prescriptive thing that they have to mere to such a degree of formality. Free-writing has been hard for my students. It's hard to get them to give themeslves permission to write whatever comes out of their brain. They don't like it because it's uncomfortable. I think that is something I want to implement more of in ENG 103 because it really does get them out of prescription writing and into writing what they know and just going for it.
Best,
McKenzie
Hi Nilima!
ReplyDeleteThis post is very interesting because I think it touches all of us as instructors. Most of the teachers want their students to be intrinsically motivated. However, it becomes a big challenge when they take classes that are just mandatory. Also, some of them might not have had a good experience with related classes in their school and high school levels, then, they might expect the same teaching styles to reappear now in their undergrad. However, I consider the modeling strategy to be beneficial. This semester, I used one of texts from my undergrad as part of my peer-review workshop. I had them review the text in pairs and come up with comments after having outlined some review strategies. When they finished their review, I told them to comment openly about that writing. Once they had given their comments, I let them know I was the writer of that text and told them how they thought that someone who wrote like that could get to the point of being their writing instructor now. In my opinion, that activity was useful because I could see how after that, they stopped blaming themselves for not writing perfectly and felt free to express their ideas in their writing.Yet, showing your "weaknesses" in writing by modeling in the classroom might cause students to undermine you and loose some confidence in you as an instructor. I don't mean that we shouldn't do it, but we have to be careful about the extend to which we allow this to happen to keep the balance.
Cristian :)
I almost feel like something that will be a big help is acknowledging this discrepancy of your expectations of them and them being forced to be in the class (which inherently creates an extrinsically motivated experience). I'm honestly considering having a conversation with them on my first day and calling them out on their feelings, it might help us begin on a much more honest foot rather than faking it together the whole semester. I also think that incorporating many of these ideas (especially free-writing) will be especially helpful of freeing themselves of their own expectations.
ReplyDelete