Posted on 11/12/2015

In this era of video games, social media, cable television and cellular phones, motivating students to study, do their homework, make good grades and perform well on tests have proven to be a gargantuan task. The fact of the matter is education has many more competitors since the days when my mother was attending school, more than forty years ago. In today’s educational climate students are becoming more and more distracted as a result of the aforementioned competitors. However, there is hope. When I thought of gift giving and student achievement, my initial reaction was they are like two strangers that have yet to meet, and if they do meet, they will be an unlikely pair. I know for a fact that the contrary is true. I have seen time and again the powerful impact of gifting in terms of increasing students’ motivation to perform well in school. The fact of the matter is parents, the student’s first teacher, and classroom teachers have been using praise to reward students, even during my mother’s school years. Believe it or not praise and gifting serves the same purpose. In fact, the terms could be used interchangeably. They are both used to say: Job well done, I am proud of you, congratulations and much, much more.

I can recall a time during my teaching experience when a lower achieving student emerged to become one of my top academic performers. As much as I would like to say that it was my teaching style, or my combination of teaching strategies that was responsible for that student’s sudden spike in achievement, I would be disingenuous if I did so. The simple truth is the student’s parent entered into an agreement with him that if he improve his grades, then she would purchase him a Play Station video game console for Christmas’ and that was the motivational factor. Certainly, this student had it within him to reach that level of academic proficiency, but he just needed that extra motivation that often comes with the power of gifting. Just one more example, one year I purchased workbooks for all of my middle school Intensive Reading students and presented them as a gift to each student. Remarkably, as I assigned homework from those books, I noticed a drastic increase in the number of students returning their homework. In short, gifting definitely has a positive effect on student achievement, we just need to do more of it.