Overwhelmed to Motivated

One thing that made me think this week while starting a new course was about when we are thrown into a situation that may be overwhelming at first, it is so rewarding to finally feel that you have everything under control, which can be extremely motivating.

I am just about half way through my 40 day yoga challenge, dance classes are becoming more and more difficult requiring more practice time, and I am way behind on my self-regulated 3100 online course. I finally got the chance to log into my school email and waiting for me was an overwhelming 101 emails from 3250. That shot my schedule of completing a journal entry on Friday evening, leaving me even further behind. As a teacher, how can you convince students to change their perception when they feel as if they are drowning in their workload?

If I were a yoga teacher, I would say, "you are enough, and you are completely capable. Just breathe."

But that wouldn't suit everyone’s learning style, a more broad stream approach would be:

• Ensure students are fully prepared and understand the extent of workload up front, before the course even starts to avoid them assuming it is less work than it will be.

• Help students out by providing guidelines on how much time to allocate, and ensure these are accurate guidelines.

• If certain programs are being used in a course, suggest students familiarize themselves with these before they start your course.

It especially interesting for me to look at this from both the student perspective in my 3250 course and how critical it is to communicate this information to students upfront from my teaching perspective.

#Motivation #FirstWeek #LearningStyles