Boothbay Readings - Drive

While reading professional books I expect to notice new pieces of information to see a fuller picture of a topic, but it is always fascinating when professional books spark a thought process with something that is not as completely related to the text. I love those moments of inspiration. I often felt that way while reading David Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

The topic of motivation is not new to me. As I would imagine is true with any teacher preparation program we talked about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. However, this book was a great read after having some years of teaching under my belt to be able to dig deeper and analyze the role of motivation in my teaching. The book talks about the outdated concept of motivation that Pink calls Motivation 2.0 based on rewards for good work or punishments for negative attributes versus Motivation 3.0 that focuses on the intrinsic. He also talks about Type X behavior that feeds off of external rewards and Type I behavior that thrives on internal satisfaction.

While reading I felt even more grateful to work at my current school that has so many of the qualities that Pink says are key to facilitating Motivation 3.0 and fostering an appreciation for Type I behavior. The book provided a lot of support to validate the decisions our school makes, such as limiting extrinsic rewards and focusing on doing what is right because it is the right thing to do and a love of learning.

I appreciated that this book helped me to reflect a lot about my current practices and how I can improve to capitalize on environments that will help my students' creativity to flourish even more. Many of the ideas made me think about the desire to meet AYP and how that pressure can affect teachers' ability to be innovative and to work hard to create the best positive learning experiences for their students. That hysteria can also in turn affect students as they sometimes pick up on the tensions surrounding testing.

Many of the ideas in the book were used in the career world context, but it was easy to see how it would also relate to education. I also often thought about how if trends in work environments are changing it is essential for educators to be aware of it so that we can best prepare our students for the job market they will enter.

The back of the book has a toolkit that in many was synthasizes the main ideas from earlier in the book to be applied to different contexts, how to apply the ideas to our lives, and further resources to delve deeper into the topics mentioned. As with the other texts I read for the Boothbay Literacy Retreat, I am looking forward to discussing this book with the group to see where discussions go. I won't have to wait much longer; tomorrow I will be heading to Maine for the retreat!