Fifty-two fifth graders sit at desks throughout the gymnasium. A few boys wear suits and ties; girls are in their Sunday best. At each desk student-made books and projects are neatly arranged on colorful cloths brought from home. Large math projects and art works adorn the walls. Freshly cut flowers brighten the sun-lit room.

Fratney School's fifth-grade student exhibition is about to begin.

"It was the best day of my life," commented one student the next day. Another reflected, "I liked staying after school and showing my projects to students, parents, and teachers. It made me feel important."

The student exhibition is the culmination of the students' academic career at La Escuela Fratney, a kindergarten through fifth grade Milwaukee public school. The success of the exhibition depends on several other activities, including student-work portfolios, student reflection, a project approach to learning, and student-led parent/teacher conferences. The exhibition's goal is to increase students' intrinsic motivation to do quality work and to ensure that authentic forms of assessment help drive the curriculum.

My teaching philosophy holds that classroom environments and lessons should be structured so that students become intrinsically motivated to do school work, instead of being motivated solely by extrinsic rewards or punishments. If students are genuinely interested in the work and find it meaningful to their lives, its quality will be much richer than if they are working solely for a grade. That's one reason I use a structured project-approach in which students have considerable latitude in choosing what they study and research. Nonetheless, I have found that while student involvement in choosing topics spurs an interest in doing the project, it does not automatically translate into completion of the project or the production of high quality work.

Lack of student motivation and low-quality work are nemeses for most teachers, but I became particularly aware of them five years ago when I returned to the classroom after four years as program implementor for Fratney's two-way bilingual program. Despite my creative activities and participatory lessons, too many of my students seemed to be indifferent to the quality of their work. After a year back in the classroom, my frustrations were such that I knew I had to try something different.