Personal Narrative on Motivation
As a student entering middleschool (6th grade) I
joined the band program. After 5 years of piano lessons and a
succesful audition I qualified for the percussion section.
Despite my previous enjoyment and excellence in music I struggled in
the middle school band. After only a couple weeks of difficulties
the band director actually told me to, "think about dropping out of
band." That statement of course came as a shock and actually
moved me to tears.
I stayed in band, singly because of my mother's
irrational insistance upon doing so, but I hated it and did not excel
by any means; I was not motivated to do so. This however changed
one day in 8th grade when all the percussion students had to audition
for the marching band in high school. The person holding the
auditions was a student teacher from the highschool. I of course
did not do very well in the audition but the student teacher was
patient with my mistakes and instead of pointing out only what I did
wrong, told me what I was doing right and what I had to work on.
I came out of the audition feeling better about percussion.
I continued to work with this student teacher that
summer in marching band. He was quite an amazing teacher in that
he made me believe, as long as I put forth the effort, I would be able
to improve. This is much different from my previous teachers who
believed that rather than try and perhaps fail I should just give up.
Anyhow, after my positive experiences with the marching band I started
to practive more and really dedicate myself to percussion. I was
asked to join the top band at highschool as a junior. I continued
with percussion at the University as well, becoming section leader in
my second year.
Then things came full circle. That same
student teacher who helped me seek my potential became the band
director at the high school I graduated from. He needed some help
that first summer and I agreed to come on as a percussion instructor,
something I did for the next four summers.
After I started the coursework to become a teacher I
began to think about my experiences with music. I aked myself,
"how did that student teacher motivate me when my previous two teachers
were not able to do so". I thought a lot about it and researched
how teachers can motivate students. I concluded that Mr. McCarthy
(the teacher who motivated me) was able to show me that with effort the
goal was attainable. He used a technique which stresses effort,
while this is not always effective, it certainly was in this case.
This experience was important in my decision to
become a teacher and it also reminds me how important and how
complicated motivating students can be.