I’ve worked a lot trying to find the key to successful motivation. But after a while I developed a kind of feeling, that how I (we?) try to motivate kids is more like the coach during a football match – we can shout our motivating phrases to them, but can’t do much more. If they’re not motivated, I can’t go in and play football instead of them. It’s their task to do the hard work. It’s them who have to feel how important it is to do the things well enough.
Then in 2019 I went to a teachers’ conference where the main topic was student engagement and I felt as if a whole new world opened up before my eyes. Subconsciously this was what I had been doing with my students, I just couldn’t name it precisely. But then and there I got so many new ideas and confirmation about my ideas, that motivated me to become a more engaging teacher. If you want to read more about this topic, I mostly recommend Sarah Mercer’s work as a starting point. But shortly, the key is to give them tasks they like to do, ones they find interesting and meaningful so this way they won’t look for other things to do but engage themselves wholeheartedly in the learning process.