Although I have encountered a number of demotivating learning experiences during my education, in this post I want to write about my own experiences teaching, and failing to provide motivation to my students.
For the past few years, I have been involved with a student-run volunteer teaching program run out my university’s student union. It is a two-week program running every summer, designed to provide students from low-socioeconomic and disadvantaged backgrounds with a head start in their final two years of highschool, whose final marks are the entirety of the selection criteria for Australian universities.
I volunteered as a tutor in 2010, and was given a subject called IT Applications since I was studying computer science at the time. It was my first time teaching, and I had to rely entirely on the subject booklet left by the previous year’s tutor, since I had done my final years of highschool in the US. IT Applications, while not a difficult subject, is extremely dry, and there was little practical content left behind by the previous tutor. It is also largely a business-focussed class, whose content I had little interest in. I struggled through teaching, and was largely unable to engage my students in the subject matter. However I had a successful final lesson when I ran out of content, and ended up in a lively discussion with my students about the best way to design a database system for doctors in hospitals.
I attributed my overall failure to motivate my students to my inexperience, and to the boringness of the subject material. The following year, I helped run day-to-day operations instead of tutoring, and one of my close friends taught the subject instead, redesigning it from the ground up. Last year, we decided to teach the subject together, since we both had other commitments as Ph.D. students.
The difference in our teaching styles was striking. I still struggled to keep the students engaged, but he had the students captivated. He was much more knowledgable about the subject matter, and was able to relate the tasks back to things the students cared about. I ended up essentially sitting in on the classes, letting him do all the teaching, and stepping in to help out when we split into group based tasks.
Reflecting on this experience, I learnt that the teacher’s motivation and passion for the subject material is crucial to providing a motivating learning experience.