What the @#*% Does Writing Have To Do with Fixing Cars?

Teaching communications skills to trades students can be a sales job above all else, especially at the beginning of the semester. I learned a lot from my teaching predecessor, Janie Harr, about how to help students establish those links by interviewing successful professionals in their fields about how they've used writing to find and keep good jobs. So often, these bright, capable hands-on learners have had very little success in traditional classrooms and see themselves as "bad writers." Sometimes just getting them past this stigma of "I suck" and instead into the land of "here's what I'm doing well, here's what I can improve upon" can do wonders.

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gedney.KY0180/

Let's face the facts: all of the classes I teach are required in some way, and the majority of my students would not be taking my classes if they weren't required. So motivational theory is highly relevant to my job. I like what Matthew Weller has to say in his LA Business Journal article on General Principles of Motivation, in particular his establishment of a timeline and what we can do to motivate learners at the beginning, middle and end of a learning experience.