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Keys to Success: A Way to Motivate Your Students!
Do you need a way to help motivate your student to do better in school? The Ken Garff Keys to Success program rewards students for showing improvement in academics, attendance, service, citizenship, or other categories they might need improvement in. Really it's about each individual student and them being their best selves. Students can win great prizes like snowboard/ski passes, Olympic Park passes, tickets to local college sports events, Opera and Symphony tickets as well as restaurant vouchers from our many sponsors.
The Keys program is now in it's fifth year and has 60 schools across the Wasatch Front that are participating. When year five ends, we will have given away over 250 cars, 100 scholarships, and 150,000 Key Cards which means tons and tons of prizes.
Robert and Kathi Garff started this program with "the hope of enhancing and enriching every child's educational experience." We are grateful for the opportunity to help motivate students to better their lives through educational achievements."
Five ways to help
1) Encourage student to express their opinion, talk about feelings, and make choices. Let them pick out a side dish to go with dinner and select their own extracurricular activities. Ask for input on family decisions, and show that you value it. "One of the things valued in school is class participation," says Feinberg, and "having practice at home expressing feelings" is "good for self-esteem and self-confidence." They'll be more likely to engage with the material they study if there comfortable asking questions and drawing their own conclusions.
2) Ask about what they are learning in school, not about their grades or test scores. Even if they don’t do well grade-wise compared to the other students, they might still be learning and improving, and you don't want to discourage that, Have them teach you what he learned in school today — putting the lesson into their own words will help them retain what they learned.
3) Celebrate achievements, no matter how small. Completing a book report calls for a special treat; finishing a book allows your child an hour of video games. You'll offer positive reinforcement that will inspire them to keep learning and challenging themselves. If a child feels as if they are successful regardless of what it is, it builds them up and makes the next challenge easier.
4) Focus on strengths, encouraging developing talents. Even if they don’t ace their math test, they may have written a good poem in English class. In addition to a workbook for math practice, give them a writing journal. When they know that they are talented in one area, they’ll be confident enough to try to achieve in others. You don't want to not offer challenges, but there's always a transfer when you have your kid feeling good about who they are.
5) Turn everyday events into learning opportunities. Being educated doesn't mean knowing a lot of disconnected facts. Learning is building from what you know and connecting it to new facts. Encourage your students to explore the world around him, asking questions and making connections.
