Questions, Questions: Part 2

This will make more sense if you read this first!

As most things regarding education seem to do, the more answers I hear, the more questions I end up having.  Recently, I was able to sit down with my host teacher and have a discussion about motivation.  Most importantly, I was interested in seeing what she had to say about how she motivates her students, and how effective those methods seem to be.  According to my teacher, the easiest and most prevalent way teachers motivate students and show progress are through grades.  She explained that she feels that most students at our school feel that just passing classes is enough, and that there doesn't seem to be much of a desire to excel beyond that by the majority of students.  In our class, her policy for late work is much more lenient than some other teachers in the school.  My teachers allows students almost the entire trimester to get homework assignments turned into her for at least partial credit.  According to her this, coupled with a regular email update to parents every week, encourages the students to finish most of their assignments.  Her most salient advice to me was the importance of follow through.  She said that whatever policies I establish need to be adhered to in all cases, and similarly at all times.  I think this is great advice because it allows to establish a precedent within my classroom.

An interesting thing that my host teacher brought up is that she tries to use positive encouragement sparingly.  Her reasoning was that if a student answers a question and you tell them that it was a "great answer", then it discourages other students from answering, or from that student pushing past their initial answer.  I have very mixed feelings about this approach.  I can see what she is saying but I feel like you can still validate and praise all answers, while still pushing students.  I personally am a very positive person, so it would be difficult for me to take this approach.  I have noticed that she does not use positive verbal encouragement very often with her students and have wondered how it effects her relationship with them. 

Something that struck me during our interview that my teacher said several time was that, "we don't have kids that go to Harvard"  when talking about the student population at our school.  There is a very wide economic gap within the community, but our school has honor roll, AP classes, honors credits, and National Honor Society just like most other high schools.  She also mentioned that her own children who attended the school were part of groups of friends that were very academically gifted and high achieving.  That being said, she meant that even the smartest students do not attend Ivy League schools.  This comment really confuses me because I don't understand how there could be a vacuum of Ivy League material students in this one community.  Both of these comments make me wonder more about how my teacher actually views her students.  I don't get the impression she thinks of them as adults (or at least on their way to being adults).  It is hard to tell whether this is from the community, her age difference from the students, or her personal style.