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Why Students May Not Be Motivated to Do Their School Work
Featured Author:
Julia G. Thompson
Julia Thompson has been a public school teacher for more than thirty years. Thompson currently teaches in Fairfax County, Virginia, and is an active speaker, consultant, teacher trainer, and workshop presenter. Her most recent book, Discipline Survival Guide for the Secondary Teacher, Second Edition, written with busy high school teachers in mind, has just been released. Author of the best-selling The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide and The First-Year Teacher’s Checklist, she also publishes a Website (http:juliagthompson.com) offering tips for teachers on a variety of topics, maintains a Twitter account with daily advice for teachers at TeacherAdvice@Twitter.com, and a blog at http://juliagthompson.blogspot.com.
Julia G. Thompson
The following may be reasons students aren’t motivated to complete their homework. Are you a motivational teacher? Take our quiz and find out.
• The work is too difficult
• The work is too easy
• Their work may not be appropriate for a significant number of students
• They are distracted by someone sitting near them
• They are distracted by an event that happened at home or in the neighborhood
• The work is booooooring!
• They don’t know what to do how to do the work
• They are perfectionists and are fearful of failing
• They are ill
• They live in a culture with different values from the values of their school
• They need special assistance with school work and do not receive it
• They need activities that encourage them to be active, but are in a classroom where they are expected to work quietly and passively
• They lack confidence
• Their goals are unrealistic
• They do not see the connection between the daily work they do now and the successful future that they could have
• The offered rewards do not appeal to them
• They have little or no curiosity about the lesson
• They do not relate well with their classmates
• They perceive their teacher as uncaring
• The learning style of an assignment is very different from their preferred learning style
• They lack the prerequisite skills to master the work successfully
• Their peers mock them for school success
• There is no long-term planning in their home lives
• They are tired of being told what to do
• They have no plan for managing their time, materials, or work
• The work is not relevant to their needs
• Their work is relevant to their needs, but students don’t understand that it is
• They do not have enough background knowledge to connect present learning to previous knowledge
• They can’t read or write well enough to do the work quickly and efficiently
• No one at home stresses that they need to do well in school
