Motivating Students Essay -- Education School Teacher

A large problem in schools faced by educators is motivating their students. Motivating, meaning, giving their students a reason for the work they must complete. Working without a purpose can be very challenging for students and will keep them from appreciating and taking care of their work in a satisfactory approach. In the Problem Problem by Gerald Graff he expresses his feelings towards the motivation of students. He discusses how students don’t appreciate the work they do and how they should. Graff believes that most students have a negative attitude towards their work and they simply wonder why they are doing certain assignments. The three main topics Graff breaches is the students’ ability to write an analytical paper, an argumentative paper, and a persuasion paper. In class when students receive an analysis assignment, not all but most of them frown. Analysis is a very pitied assignment due to the feelings and attitudes students have towards them. Students merely don’t understand the point in why they are analyzing a topic they do not care for. In Graff’s essay he gives an example from a student by the name of Karen. Her attitude toward analyzing topics is incredibly poor and from the tone in the essay she wrote it is extremely noticeable that she believes writing an analysis is stupid. For example she writes, "It seems to me that we analyzed things that didn’t seem to have much to analyze†¦.Another reason I do not like to analyze, though this may sound arrogant, is because it is not important to me(Gerald et al, p.2b, 2003)." Karen has no care for analyzing any sort of literature or event that happens in her life, which makes her come off as a disinteresting person. Karen is one of many students who share the same or a si... ...nment to be successful and well done the student needs a purpose that they believe in or know of. Simply writing an essay because a teacher assigned it is not viable in the eyes of Gerald. There needs to be a purpose for quality writing and expression. Gerald’s ideas are exceptionally easy to agree with. His points are all valid and reasonable. He makes no false statements about the avid student and he understands the incapability of student to write without purpose. It would be preposterous to disagree with a written document such as this one because of the easily identified problems he shares and the quality of the content he shares. Problem Problem is incredibly accurate and adequately shows the views of the well certified author, Gerald Graff. Works Cited Gerald, G. (2003). Clueless in academia. New Haven, CT: Yale.