Happy Thoughts

A bright spot in the hectic-ness? hectic-icity? hectic-ation? that is the holiday season. A small pat-on-the-back moment for me.
All semester long I've been helping out at Tarzan's school, with the Academic Decathlon team which means for one period a day I am at Tarzan's high school helping the team write speeches, giving them tests, quizzes, urging them to come to class, to read the book and do the work. It's not hard but it is harder than it sounds like it ought to be.
How does one teach motivation?
Yesterday, the teacher I have been helping out came back to hear these speeches. Each student has to have a speech, on a unique subject, originally written, memorized and between three and a half to four minutes long. We have been slogging through these things since before the Thanksgiving break. Some days they don't do any work though they have an entire hour of free work time every day, some days they don't bring their speech or anything to work on, sometimes they pitch fits about how they don't like their speech and want to write a new one. And some days they just don't come.
But yesterday all the stars aligned and though not all twelve of them were there, the ones that were had their speeches and gave them for the teacher to hear. As she left she said she was really impressed with the quality of their work. She had thought they would need more revisions and structure work then they seem to and that she thinks we have a shot at some medals at the competition this year.
I felt so pleased. All the struggling, the prodding, the urging, the threatening, the pleading, actually accomplished the goal.
Now if they will only give the speech they prepared and not go off-book when January comes around.

This is me and I could teach high school, if someone else came up with the lesson plans, I only had twelve kids, for one period a day and they were the highest GPAs in the place. No sweat.