So THAT’S Why Teachers Work So Hard!

Actually, the full title of this post should be:

So THAT’S Why Teachers Work So Hard Despite Unsatisfactory Pay and Difficult Conditions.

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Photo – Omri Epstein

School may have not been mentioned at all in this article about Proffesor Adam Grant’s (a proffesor of organizational psychology) theory but he makes it crystal clear.

Grant says that people work harder when they know who benefits from their work, when they know their work matters. “The greatest untapped source of motivation, he argues, is a sense of service to others; focusing on the contribution of our work to other people’s lives has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about helping ourselves”.

Teachers have the benificiaries of their work squarely in front of them every day. We don’t need initatives from a highly popular proffesor to organize meetings at the workplace with the people who have been influenced by what we do.

His claim that this is the most powerful motivator certainly makes sense to me, as many teachers that I know work in overcrowded classrooms, in uncomfortable physical conditions and their pay does not reflect the hours of work put in. Yet there the teachers are!

Perhaps you may say that I see references to teaching everywhere, but it seems a perfect fit for me!

P.S I’m now one of the lucky teachers who have a working air-conditioner in her class!

 

5 thoughts on “So THAT’S Why Teachers Work So Hard!”

    1. Perhaps those teachers who have stopped working hard have lost sight of the goal. They just see that they have to teach for next umpteen years, too many kids come and go so they begin feeling that it doesn’t matter what they do. Perhaps they need an intervention intiative.
      Thanks for stopping by!

    1. Yes! Lots of unresolved problems (and no Internet connection)but from the middle of the second day of school I have a classroom!

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