Excited to Learn
Motivation and Culturally Responsive Teaching
Foreword Review's 2015 Indiefab Book of the Year Award Winner!
Motivation is to learning as oxygen is to breathing
Most experts agree that student motivation and engagement are critical components of teaching and learning. Yet both are vulnerable to distraction. Effective instructional planning is also motivational planning!
Excited to Learn: Motivation and Culturally Responsive Teaching helps teachers leverage students’ natural curiosity and academic potential, featuring:
- Over 50 strategies to enhance students’ emotional safety, value for learning, engagement, and competence
- A field-tested and research-validated model to make instructional planning also motivational planning
- Abundant tools, templates, and protocols to strengthen student motivation and learning
- A clear rationale for intrinsic motivation, especially in culturally diverse classrooms
- Essential information for teaching linguistically diverse students and students who have been historically underserved
Excited to Learn begins with background on intrinsic motivation. Next, it introduces the motivational framework for culturally responsive teaching, the foundation of award-winning schools throughout the United States and abroad. Then it provides specific strategies that can be adapted to different subject areas and developmental levels. The epilogue provides guidelines for adult learning and includes an activity to introduce the book to teachers.
Support students’ curiosity, engagement, and success as life-long learners!
Check out these related videos:
- March 2015 Educational Leadership Interview: Margery Ginsberg
- UICCEL Talcott Lesson Study
- How One Urban High School Connects to the Community through Community Walks
- Chicago Teachers Shadow High School Students to Understand their School Experience
For more information, check out this article by Margery Ginsberg: Making Diverse Classrooms Safer for Learning
“How can you work with classroom dynamics to increase your culturally diverse students’ investment in learning? In this theoretically sound and immensely practical guide, Margery Ginsberg offers teachers a clear framework loaded with wonderful hands-on activities that have the power to change how teachers and students relate to each other and to academic learning. This book is designed to enable teachers to unlock their students’ inner motivation and reach the students teachers find most challenging.”
— Christine Sleeter, Professor Emerita
California State University Monterey Bay
"In this book Margery Ginsberg provides us with a vision and framework to transform the learning experience for students and teaches to one in which both can flourish. Her use of classroom scenarios illuminates how students and teachers might experience the classroom environment differently but goes further to provide examples of how teachers might adopt practices to enhance student engagement. Importantly the practices discussed are designed not only to increase student’s attitude and feelings of attachment to school, but also to provide substantive connections with academic content that will be enduring. Ginsberg’s extensive experience working with educators in a variety of settings gives her a deep understanding of teaching and the challenges and the possibilities of creating transformative learning experiences.
"Education can be a complex endeavor for both students and teachers. Ginsberg’s positive orientation towards problem solving and a commitment to authentic and motivating educational experiences is crucial to unpacking these complexities. Through the examples in this practical guide, we can see how both students and teachers can increase their feelings of efficacy. The practices compiled within the book combine theory and teaching experience in a way that any educator could find useful. Teachers in every stage of their careers will find the strategies Ginsberg outlines helpful as they consider how to construct inclusive, relevant and challenging educational learning experiences for all their students. This is an extremely useful resource and essential reading for teachers who care about their students’ learning and their success in school and society."
"This book adds to Margery Ginsberg’s body of work in the area of culture and motivation in ways that continue to invite practitioners into rich conversations about the role of culture in contemporary classrooms. Ginsberg anchors readers in theory about culture and motivation and offers practical tools to put that theory into action. The “Motivational Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching” allows teachers to truly respond to the complex, dynamic, and diverse cultures present in classrooms; this framework encourages teachers to learn about culture and to apply that knowledge in systematic ways leading to motivating, effective lessons."
"How can you work with classroom dynamics to increase your culturally diverse students’ investment in learning? In this theoretically sound and immensely practical guide, Margery Ginsberg offers teachers a clear framework loaded with wonderful hands-on activities that have the power to change how teachers and students relate to each other and to academic learning. This book is designed to enable teachers to unlock their students’ inner motivation and reach the students teachers find most challenging."
"Every educator wants their students to be excited to learn. Margery Ginsberg effectively blends theory and practice to illustrate how teachers can elicit the intrinsic motivation of all of their students, even in the most diverse classrooms. Anyone who wants to be a more effective teacher – at any grade level – needs to read this book!”