The importance of motivation.

Hello,
Welcome back to my blog.
This is my second post and I hope it finds you and your families safe and sound.
I have chosen to write about motivation. How are Albanian students encouraged  by their teachers and what can we do to increase their level of motivation?

We often hear children complaining about their school, subjects and even worse, their teachers.
This may be a problem, because it affects students' learning and process of building their personality.
According to Psychology, motivation is what guides us to accomplish a goal.
Erik Erikson, a well-known psychologist, strongly emphasized the fact that children need motivation, stimulation and valuation, in order for them to be able to develop a sense of zeal for work and achievement.
If children(students) are not appreciated for their best skills and they are compared to others, they will feel inferior and lose interest.
As a result, those students are going to hate school and even more those who discouraged them; teachers.

We all remember our teachers: those who gave us a hand, those who let us free to express our ideas and those who helped us to achieve our dreams. But, we also remember those who offended us for not being good at their subject, those who suppressed our thoughts and those who destroyed our dreams and made us feel worthless.
Now that I am writing, my literature teacher came to my mind. She was like a dictator. She just came at class without even saluting and called our names to tell the poem or the summary of a story by hard.
We, as future teachers, have the golden opportunity to change things. Maybe, we won't improve everything, but at least we should give it a try.
I cannot say that there are not capable teachers. I cannot deny the fact that there are also teachers who are always there for us behind their role as professors. They are rare, but they do exist.

What can we do to motivate our students?
First of all, I think we should be humans, we should know our students and understand their problems and difficulties.
Teachers may make students understand what they want to be in the future by having discussions about their dreams or their talent.
We should understand which is their skill and push them to master it.
Of course, the professional formation has its own importance and teachers should find innovative and creative methods to make students follow the lesson because they want so, not because they are obliged to.
Personally, I have been a shy student and even though I knew the answers, I didn't take the step to say them. I wanted teachers to give me an impetus. I think there are also students who learn better in group works rather than individually.
I totally agree that a teacher's job is not a piece of cake. He/she has to deal with different kinds of students, even with those who don't pay the smallest attention to what teachers say. If the relationship between students and teachers is a well-built one, this pushes students to be more attentive during the lecture and to interact.
We have to understand their 'weak points' and also what a student's talent is, by their reaction.
Praises and even a smile can be extremely motivating to boost students' self-esteem and good behaviour.
Students need to be valuated and rewarded for what they do.
For example: pupils of elementary classes can be motivated even in this way: after they finish their class works, we may allow them to play different games in the schoolyard.
A teacher should be attentive of who deserves to be rewarded more and who deserves to be motivated in order to do better next time.
Let's take another example: if students are given an essay ,the teacher may choose the best realised one and present it in the essay's competition( if there's one) in the capital city.
A teacher's job remains that of displaying what students know best and add what they don't know. Everything students do should be followed by an evaluation. Evaluation doesn't mean putting them a 10 or a 4. Students want to be evaluated by pointing out what they have achieved so far and by making them believe that by working hard they will always achieve more.
Teachers are students' leaders. It's very important to not just share a well-explained information, but even to allow them to have fun. Nobody needs a teacher who enters the class without saying hello and starts the lecture immediately. Nobody needs a teacher who brings his/her problems to the class and forget his/her duty.
It is true that a good teacher should be well-prepared and professional, but above all he/she should be human, should be communicative and to adapt to students' necessities and interests. A good teacher is empathic, innovative, all-involving and fair with everybody.
Above all, a good and beloved teacher is he/she who motivates his class to make progress and encourages each student to display his best, without being afraid of being prejudiced or that his ideas won't be taken into consideration.

For all the reasons mentioned above, I think it's time for teachers to improve themselves and give their maximum.

I want to close my post with two striking quotes.

*Tell me and I forget
   Teach me and I remember
   Involve me and I learn*
                (Benjamin Franklin)

*They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.*
                      (Carl Burechner)
P.s Feel free to share your opinions.
Thank you!