Students and Procrastination. How can I Motivate them?

Photo by fauxels from Pexels

Photo by fauxels from Pexels

by Katherine Reilly

Procrastination is a trait most people are familiar with. How many times have you been faced with a challenge you would inadvertently or purposely delay because you couldn’t find the energy or desire to accomplish it? Lack of motivation is usually the cause and this is a concern most teachers aspire to rectify by implementing different approaches with various degrees of success.

Motivation is not merely a means that can be used to inspire your students to work hard. If viewed as an ‘educational approach’, then you will most likely fail in doing so. What educators should focus on instead, are various factors which will bring about the desired result, not only in class, but in students’ everyday lives. We tend to forget that students look up to us for guidance and our presence will in most cases, leave an everlasting effect on them.

But the question remains… “How can I motivate my students?” The simplest answer to this question is to put yourself in their shoes and realize that motivation can be achieved by adhering to a few strategies which are more or less familiar to most educators.

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Improve your Positive Thinking

Alison Ledgerwood joined the Department of Psychology at UC Davis in 2008 after completing her PhD in social psychology at New York University. She is interested in understanding how people think, and how they can think better. Her research, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, investigates how certain ways of thinking about an issue tend to stick in people’s heads. Her classes on social psychology focus on understanding the way people think and behave in social situations, and how to harness that knowledge to potentially improve the social world in which we all live.