If you are in charge of running a school, one of the major issues you might need to address is how to make the students more motivated. For a long time, the use of awards has been the mainstay of doing this. If you are critical, you might wonder whether it’s a method of appreciation that actually works, and what you can do to ensure that the results are optimal.
Why should you motivate the students?
The first thing you need to figure out when in such a position is why you should motivate the students at all. There are many benefits that stem from having motivated students and these include:
• They will have better school performance: Motivated students tend to perform better academically compared to the rest. This in turn means that the overall performance of the school will also be increased, which will give it a higher profile. Whether you are running the school for profit or not, having a large number of students perform well is something that you will definitely be interested in.
• It will be easier to teach them: Even if your school has all the facilities it needs, finding it difficult to teach the students is likely to make it much harder to run the facility. It is for this reason that you should aim to do as much as you can to make the teachers’ work easier. In addition to adequate pay, other factors that affect this include student motivation. Students whose work is appreciated tend to work harder and influence the rest to do so as well, and this in turn means that your teachers will be working with more willing students.
As you can see, providing awards to students can only be a positive thing for everyone involved in the school.
Do they really work?
It has been shown that acknowledging the hard work that students put in when working has numerous benefits on their psyche, and that it’s worth it. For one, the fact that they will be recognized for having worked so hard will motivate them to strive towards their specific goals, such as academic excellence. In addition to that, the anticipation of winning such awards will also make it easier for them to compete with each other more. In the end, the school will have served its purpose: you will have molded the students into better human beings, and you will produce more learned individuals into the society.
How can you get the most out of such awards?
If you intend to provide the awards in a school setting, simply getting random awards will not be enough. You will need to think things through thoroughly before putting in place the system you will be using. Some of the things you need to address include:
• The quality of the awards: People are more likely to want to win an award if it’s of high quality. This means that when you are shopping around for them, you should try to get ones that look classy and which are desirable. For instance, you could get one of the glass awards from CrystalPlus, which will definitely appeal to anyone.
• Have clear reasons why you give them: In addition to that, you will need to have very clear rules that apply to whoever will get the award. For instance, you could get a category to award students who have improved in their academics. In such cases, you would need to come up with a system for determining who such a student is.
• Consider giving the awards in a ceremonial manner: Personalized crystal awards tend to be more appreciated if they are given with some pomp. For this reason, you should make sure that the awards are given not in private, but in the presence of other people such as students, parents and other stakeholders in the school. This not only makes it easier to appreciate the significance of the award, but also plays a role in encouraging the rest of the students to try and aspire to the same.
• If you want to, provide other material gifts: If you do the above, chances are that the people receiving the awards will be grateful that they have. However, you could make it even more meaningful by providing other incentives including cash and scholarships together with the award.
• Have different awards for different types of accomplishments: If you want to give an award to the best student in Math as well as the best in the Science, you should not make them the same award. Making each of them unique will make them more appreciated.
In summary, it is very true that providing awards to students for various accomplishments will motivate them and the rest of the students to work harder. This should therefore be a strategy employed by any school owner to ensure that they get the most out of their students!
