E is for Effort - Happy New Year

Welcome to 2010, SMAC Class of 2010. It is great to be in the classroom everyday. Only seeing students on Tuesday and Thursday always felt interrupted and disconnected. My mentor teacher distributed grades this week to help focus students preparing for the semester final exams. I was shocked! For the Accelerated physics students, the most popular grade was E, next came D, then C. Very interestingly there were no B's and then a small group of A's and A+'s. The lack of B's is most interesting to me because I think I know why. Any student who applies even modest effort can easily get an A. The other 80-90% of each class are just floating and taking whatever they get without applying effort. How do we motivate these students? Inspirational speeches come to mind, but how much will that help in the long run? Somehow we teachers need to build in daily high expectations that challenge and motivate students. These strong expectations must be set up front. Please send me any suggestions on how to create a class environment that motivates students.