What keeps the fire burning? Keeping your motivation to teach.

Molina, Y; Rosado, N and Saleth, B

This article aims to provide fellow EFL state teachers with an opportunity to reflect about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in their everyday teaching practice. Many questions come to our minds: What motivates us teachers to become teachers? How long does the passion to teach last? How do we keep the desire to continue learning? What decreases our motivation to teach? (Pettis, J., 2002). We all have different academic and pedagogical backgrounds with unique experiences. Besides, we teachers have different roles (Gonzalez, A. Montoya, C. & Sierra, N. 2002). We are professionals (Ur, P., 2002), we are workers, and we are also human beings. Each of these roles creates in the society and in the institutions certain expectations. These expectations are modifying as the society itself changes presenting us teachers with the challenge of adapting to this changing world (Schaak, L. Cady, J., 2004; Partin, R., 2009), to new trends in education, etc. Considering this variety and changing conditions, we are interested in discussing the factors that trigger and keep our motivation to teach. In this aspect, some authors (Ur, P., 1991; Harmer, J., 1998, 2008) suggest that personal reflection, research work, building academic community, sharing with colleagues, participating of in-house staff meetings, opportunities for teacher appraisal, attending conferences and courses might have a positive impact in teachers motivation. In this article, we will review what authors have said about us teachers. We will then contrast that information with our own experience and with the one from teachers in our community. The purpose is to analyze the factors that affect teachers motivation to finally suggest a list of critical issues that affect positively or negatively teachers motivation in the teaching career. Key words:

Suggested Structure of the article Introduction ( 1 -2 pages max) Why is it important to talk about motivation? What has been said about motivation and teaching by authors? What concept of teacher motivation are we taking? Announce the topics and structure of the text. Review of literature (2-3 pages max) Motivation for language teacher; types of motivation Areas to promote motivation for language teachers Our experience: reporting data form questionnaire Here I suggest we design a questionnaire (derived from ideas/ themes in the literature) to apply to teachers in your schools, in various context here in Barranquilla to collect data about what motivates them. We could then contrast what authors say and what teachers say. What do you think? Discussion Conclusion References Gonzlez, A. Montoya, C. & Sierra, N. (2002). What do EFL teachers seek in professional development programs? Ikala, 7(13), 29-50 Harmer, J. (1988). The practices of English language teaching. Edinburgh: Pearson Longman Harmer, J. (2008). How to teach English. Edinburgh: Pearson Longman

Partin, R. (2009). The classrooms teachers survival guide. San Francisco: Josey Bass. Pettis, J. (2002). Developing our professional competence: Some reflections. In J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An Anthology of current practice (pp. 393-396). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press Schaak, L. Cady, J. (2004) Talking teaching Implementing reflective practice in groups. Oxford: Scarecrow Education Ur, P. (1991). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ur, P. (2002). The English teacher as professional. In J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 388-392). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press