socializing alienated students

In the section about socializig apthetic students brophy talks about motivating student by connecting modeling, persuasion, and scafolding to emtiontional invovlement and commitment. He is quick to note that without the emtional attachment there is a high probablity that the apathtic child will still refuse to learn. There are ideas in this section that i agree with, however there is one huge concept in which i felt alienates the student the same if not more than if you just ignored them.

The parts i did agree on were ones that invloved forcing the child to make the connections along with your guidence. i think it is important for the child to deside why learning and education is important to them. Making connections with the childs outside intrests and what you are doing in the classroom is a great way to indirectly get the child excited about learing. as mentioned in an earlier article learning is not always about fun, while learning is not always about fun it is a good way to get the child excited. Once you get them in the mode of working actual unfun school work will seem more routine and now they have the motivation to learn regardless if this one task is exciting or not.

Throughout the article Brophy comes back to the idea of connecting “learning experiences with their self-concepts.” He claims that in doing this students will then see themselves as active open-minded learners. This idea is extremely important in preparing students for higher education. College bond studnets need to have this ingrained so that its involunary by the time they go off to college or they will crash and burn. I saw a lot of my friends their first year at college fall off the deep end when any of their classes required even the slightest anaylisis because they didn’t have the motiavtion and determination to suceed, school was just a way to get a job, there was no emtion or connection to it.

The part that i had a hard time connecting to myself was comparing what he labled closed minded learners to active or openminded learners. Here he used the example of individuals of talk shows to explain the what may happen to you if you dont take an active role in you learning. Putting others and their lifestyles down in order to motivate your students not to be that person seems like a very hypocritical view at looking at how to be openminded. You shouldn’t scare your students into thinking they might become “white trash” if they don’t straighten up. Mentioned above motivation needs to come from within, it needs to be self actuaized not scared into. Once you start labeling others students will see you as closedminded.

The main idea from this article that i felt was the most important in teacings kids self-actualization and making the shift from alienated to active learner is the idea that school is not about learning fact it is about realizing their human potential. It’s about finding how to balance, work with others, fail, and succeed.