On Motivation (College Students)

Mcoffee's latest post, "Chapter Three," got me thinking about motivation and what it might take to motivate a classroom... My best "buy-in" moments have come in team sports. Those groups were bound by a common purpose and propelled to excellence on and off the court, I believe, because of an investment and trust that grew in succeeding and failing as a unit and as parts of that unit. The guys from those teams could say anything to each other because they battled together. But it was more than saying any thing; they could say the right thing. They knew how and when to enter one another's headspace, how to challenge, when to encourage and and when to make light. Sports and writing are quite different. Sports and school are different. Finding a roadmap for the classroom in my team experience would be simplistic and unjust, but tonight those experiences are the entry point for my reflection and questions. Because I have complete confidence that my best teams could have been productive in a workshop setting. My best teams could have written well if we had written together. The dedication was there and the necessary rhetorical strategies would have been made clear as we sought relevance individually and as a whole. So are we teaching writing in the wrong setting? Within the wrong groupings? Silly as it must sound, could writing benefit from a team sports component, a larger community project or an activity tie-in? In school, writing instruction often feels divorced from a streamlined purpose, or even an identifiable set of purposes, and from the natural ways in which we write and communicate with our colleagues. I thought Williams was right on in assessing Literature as an imperfect model for courses that emphasize writing development and odd as a focal point when students are asked to produce critical essays (Chapter 5)... How can we help create an atmosphere that makes the "buy-in" more natural, sensible, desirable?

But god this stuff is tough. Each year is different, each class, and both bring a unique set of challenges. I think there's a lot of pressure on teachers to be the life-changer, to make writing meaningful and enjoyable for all of their students. What an easy way to get discouraged. We've read some inspiring essays this semester, most of which have terrific ideas but ideas, we should not forget, that developed over years and years of experience and maybe even draw on the one big career event. Thinking back to June Jordan, there's something of a readymade community (general demographics, the geography of the Bay area, Berkeley dorms/housing), a context (the time period/Black English classroom), and an event (the death of Willie's brother) that precede the buy-in. It's a magical story, I loved it, and I don't mean to take anything away from it. Rather, I bring it up to point out that the scenario had winning elements that came together for something remarkable. June Jordan was ready when that time came. Will I be? I guess the struggle is helping to find and connect the dots that arrive with each new set of faces... My mind is in a thousand places.