What Motivates Us?

I love using principalaim to highlight an educational perspective that I share or that I am wrestling with. Today’s “Read This Now!” features Daniel Pink’s RSA Animate YouTube talk, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. Daniel Pink is a New York Times bestselling author. His most popular title, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, is a favorite in schools because it deals with a change in prominence of left brainers (logical, linear) to right brainers (creative, artistic, empathetic). With Drive, Pink introduces yet another concept that just might help schools better understand how people work and think.

What motivates us? Is a question that Dan Pink has worked to help define for companies and non-profit organizations across the country for many years. What if his work can also help us in the field of education? How do we reevaluate what motivates us as teachers and administrators? Likewise, how do we reexamine how we think about rewarding high performance in institutions of learning K-12 for all constituency groups especially students? I realize the rules that exist in corporate America are not the same in schools; however, I honestly believe finding creative ways to motivate/inspire teachers and administrators in our schools will go a long way in retaining the best and brightest. Ultimately, I believe Pink’s ideas could help schools create a new framework in which to design healthier, sustainable institutions. tlb