Principles p. 75-76

3. Motivation and self-directed learning, which includes building motivation to read and learn and providing students with the instruction and supports needed for independent learning tasks they will face after graduation.

Students need to learn how to learn. As teachers, we do not want to merely supply our students with knowledge; we want to teach them the strategies to get any knowledge they need. We are guiding students along the path to becoming successful adults. In the world after school, students will not have information fed to them. If they want or need to know something, they will be responsible for finding it themselves. Thus, we need to teach students many different routes and strategies for finding information and learning new things, and then teach them how to synthesize what they find. With the technology available today, it is likely that students may find several sources, and they need to be instructed on evaluating these sources and picking out what will be helpful to them.

Another important factor raised by this principle, perhaps one of the most important topics in education, is that of motivation. As the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. We can have the best strategies available, but if our students don't want to learn, none of that matters. Thus, it is important that we make school interesting, fun, and challenging for our students. It is an outdated notion that school should feel like work. No one wants a job that they hate, so why should we make school that way for students? If students enjoy their work and feel that it has meaning, they will be much more inclined to do their work, just like adults. As teachers, we have to make school fun for our students. This does not mean that we have to play all day, but we can give students projects that feel like real-world work, which will create a sense of purpose in them.