17 novembre 2023
Dr. Daniele Nappo, Legal Representative and Founder of S. Freud Private School, focuses on the strategies teachers must implement to engage and interest the digitally native student.
For the school of the third millennium, the real challenge is to find strategies to engage, interest and intrigue the digitally native student; all this cannot but be entrusted as a subject of educational planning to the new teacher: the teacher in addition to being empathetic must be a motivator, that is, able not to bore students in the classroom. The contemporary school must be based no longer solely and only on the development of skills, but on the strengthening of soft skills (interpersonal and behavioral skills, which characterize the way one stands in contexts), as experts in education and pedagogy also suggest. The typical traditional method, mostly notionistic-transmissive, does not win over the new generations, who precisely get bored with it: technology and the use of social and video games are increasingly making inroads to enthuse young people. Certainly in study, motivations to learn are significant, this the teacher knows and must keep well in mind when conducting his lesson because they are a real formative need. A real teaching practice must be instituted to motivate students to learn. Classroom management is key to building an effective study climate, as is managing relational dynamics to prevent violence such as bullying and discrimination from breaking out.Motivation is fundamental; it is the linchpin of an action, a developing process, a beginning and a guide to support goal-directed behavior. The goal is learning in the classroom. Today's teacher must be able to find strategies to engage and interest, as well as intrigue, the digital native learner; it may not be easy for some, but if one understands the mechanisms that fascinate and excite learners, one finds oneself holding a driving engine of learning that is intrigued and entertained. It is normal that the teacher must himself be a true motivator, a person who instills curiosity, desire, pleasure himself in learning: only then will he be able to relate brilliantly with his learner, distributing gratification and rewards. The school, from this perspective, must be transformed to make it more motivating, welcoming and inclusive: it is highly significant the constant hearing and reading about the discomfort manifested by children. I have always thought that a good teacher must be, primarily a good promoter of enthusiasm, a moral dragger, a kind of psychic trainer of the pupils since he must guide them, he must arouse in them interests, he must constantly exalt on the psychological-emotional side.A bit like the trainer of a team, a figure who must not only prepare his players in an appropriate way from an athletic and physical or technical-tactical point of view, but must be able to exalt and motivate them psychologically in any circumstance, especially in moments of greatest difficulty or collapse, arousing the right amount of mental encouragement to face the complicated verification of a question or a task with a valid and strengthened conduct in the classroom. The teacher must 'train' his students to have a good level of self-esteem as well as personal confidence, so that they are prepared at an unconscious level to overcome the daily inconveniences and fatigue of school, to convince them to take risks with profit and continuity in study. This is the gratification of a job, certainly not bureaucratic tasks.
