Today we interviewed with our mentor teacher about her teaching philosophy. One of our questions was about the students’ motivation. We asked her is there any strategy that she uses and how can a teacher motivates the students. I would like to share her answer. She thinks that if the students are attending to one of the successful schools in Turkey, this is their duty. If a student doesn’t want to study, the teacher can’t do anything. She also adds that she tries to put on different and colourful cloth in this way she thinks that she can take the students’ attention. However, I think that getting their attention and motivating them are different from each other. In order to motivate the students, a teacher should try to make a student understand that s/he is valuable. The first step to achieve this is to learn their names. Another thing is to make the lesson useful for the students, in other words the teacher should try to explain way they need this lesson, what happens if they don’t learn anything, what are the pluses and minuses. Of course there are lots of things that can be done, what do you think about motivation? What can a teacher do to motivate the students?
