Let’s Motivate Our Students (1st e-reflection )

At the first time I heard a subject named Motivation and Managing Classroom for Effective Learning (MMSEL), I was sure that it should be an interesting course. In my opinion, dealing with students’ motivation and classroom management needs more effort than mastering the materials. Unfortunately, I did not come the first meeting. I got unhealthy at that time, so I just slept after Friday pray. However, I got explanation from my friends about that session.

   

There were explanation about course objectives and assessment from Ms. Mima at the first meeting. Moreover, Ms. Mima and my friends also discussed about the definition of motivation, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Actually, I have got that materials in the first semester in Educational Psychology subject. Yet, it is no problem since those issues are very often appears in education field, so we need more knowledge related to the concepts.

Talking about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, I have an experience that makes me believe on that concept. It happened when I was in the third grader of senior high school. My Chemistry teacher at that time was Mr. Harjono. He was also the vice of principal who manage students’ activities. That is why he had very close relation with student organization (OSIS). And do you know, I was the chairman of OSIS at that time. 

At the beginning, this condition made me under pressure. I had to be master in that subject, that was what appeared in my mind. I would be very shy if I could not show the best. Furthermore, Mr. Harjono used to ask me to come forward in front of the class to solve some Chemistry problems. Knowing that, I used to read and read again the Chemistry theories from the books that I have. Sometimes I borrowed some books from the library. As the result, I thought Chemistry was not the difficult subject. Whereas I was not good at all in this subject when I was in the first and second grader. My conclusion is the extrinsic motivation given by my teacher was succeeded  to be changed into intrinsic motivation. 

That is why I really believe that we can change the extrinsic motivation into intrinsic motivation consciously or subconsciously. What I experienced is the evidence of that concept. From that point, I think there is no reason for us to stop learning about how to deal with students’ motivation. The more expert we motivate our students, the more chances for our students to be better and better.  

Picture from: heystudents.com