In the previous post we looked how the roots of missing motivation go deep, and aren't just caused by kids having a "bad attitude". Another way to view this is that children cannot be unmotivated across the board. All of us can only be motivated or unmotivated in reference to particular tasks. So in this sense these kids are only unmotivated to do the sort of school work that they are being asked to do. Most schools, for a wide array of reasons, don’t do nearly enough to engage the child’s imagination or buy in. Not that I'm saying this is easy to do. But there are many charter schools and alternative schools that do a far better job of engaging the child by finding out what he is interested in, and collaboratively coming up with meaningful projects for him from there. This was John Dewey’s huge contribution to education. Doing math on a ditto is altogether less meaningful than doing math to solve a problem you’re interested in, like say calculating how many schools supplies you would want to buy to open a school store.
Or yet another angle to look at this from is that in a sense we are all motivated across the board in one sense, to make sense of the world, to preserve our self-concept and to protect ourselves emotionally. Lots of this sort of motivation occurs below the conscious level. From this angle engaging the unmotivated student involves finding out what sorts of topics she tends to find meaningful and proposing projects that would help her to explore these areas.
In regard to the emotional aspects, it inolves learning to talk with her in ways that support her opening up and taking a chance rather than keeping herself up inside her shell where it makes sense from her perspective to be, since it seems to her that exposing her wishes, interests and dreams will only result in more pain as it has in the past.
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