A friend of mine recently shared this Princeton commencement speech, given by Jeff Bezos of Amazon this past Spring. I know commencement speeches are meant to be inspiring, but this really struck a chord with me in light of this Human Motivation class we have all been participating in.
He really identifies many of the themes we've been discussing, and is very blunt in questioning the graduating class. They are obviously a talented group, and have likely been told so many steps of the way. He asks how they will use their gifts, and if they will take pride in their gifts OR take pride in their choices? He relays a story of when he was a child, when he inadvertently hurt his beloved grandmother's feelings, and tells how his grandfather pulled him aside to say "One day, you will understand that it's harder to be kind than clever." What a great and powerful message.
I think this relates so strongly to all that we have learned about motivation! A growing body of evidence shows that students have a decrease in motivation when they are given extrinsic motivators and rewards, and also that children learn quickly how to highlight their smarts but step back and sometimes outright refuse to participate if they feel failure could follow their effort. How do we challenge them to see failure as opportunity to try again, and to try in another way, and to stay persistent, and to stretch and grow their entire lives?
To me, it seems one huge way of doing this is to put a lot of effort into really knowing our students...which can be really challenging! Also valuable is encouraging participation on the part of the parents, which can be even more challenging, and sharing enough of your strategies that the parents feel comfortable with them and use the same strategies at home. Working in ECE, this is possible and encouraged, but I'm not sure how well my ideas could work in K-12. It seems like between limited time with families, limited resources, and the demands of standardized testing it could be an extreme challenge. But as they say, it takes a village...
Argh Mia, I know this Amazon guy, Bezos, is powerful, but are you aware of the predatory practices Amazon has engaged in with publishers? They threaten to not sell books if publishers won't discount them ONLY to AMAZON. This may have the effect of publishers not publishing the rich diversity of work that they have in the past published.
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