A few days ago Bruce Hembd posted a YouTube video about people’s real motivation for work over at Horn Matters. I believe that the points illustrated in the video are true. Motivation comes from within, not from external sources. As a teacher, the best way to motivate a student to practice is to convince them that music is an important art in it’s own right. I like to encourage my students to listen to many different types of music. I also like to incorporate little bits of exciting information about music history when relevant.  Giving a student rewards for practicing rarely works in my experience. It is also not good to tell students to study music because it will improve their math/reading/science scores. There are cheaper and faster ways to do that. The practice of music has always been an important human endeavor and it deserves to be continued. Once a student realizes this it is much easier to convince them to practice it and to contribute to it.