To Schrute or Not to Schrute

The key to motivation is often elusive to teachers. Trying to find engaging and exciting ways to present materials, while still adhering to standards and teaching students the material necessary is challenging. Cool Cat Teacher Blog tries to tackle this question in a unique format. Her post entitled Why Aren't they Motivated? Does Looking at Dwight Schrute Give us the Answer? discusses the traditional role teachers play in trying to motivate students. She references a friends video featuring the ideas of Alfie Kohn, who discusses that disengaging tasks and meaningless reward systems create a system of failure for teachers who try and engage students. I think this is a really humorous look at a struggle teacher's face daily. In highlighting this post, I wanted to bring the most attention to how this could apply to professional development. Teachers and professionals often complain that professonial development is not engaging and this offers a look into how workshops can be more humorous and attractive for teachers. Personally, the post had me at Dwight Schrute and I think that most teachers would agree!