Garnering Knowledge for Teaching

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/health/03rewa.html

Need to be dissertating, but I couldn’t resist a short commentary on this one.  I’ve often discussed the benefits and drawbacks of using rewards in the classroom.  I am one of those who believes that some type of reward system can be a useful tool in maintaining a positive classroom culture.  I have also seen this type of system go haywire and lose its effectiveness.  My students will tell you I think the reward should reflect the activity done to achieve the reward.  It must be a meaningful reward or it will simply be another “thing” in the child’s life.

Here are a few thoughts about some of the reward systems discussed in the article:

• Several of the rewards discussed were monetary and had to do with AP tests.  I’m not sure this is where the debate should reside.  Just getting cash for a good test seems shady to me and could encourage misappropriation.  I also feel that paying teachers for their students’ good scores, although an admirable thought, opens doors that might not be conducive to true learning.  A more reasonable approach could involve students scoring high on AP and standardized test scores would earn funding for a public college.  That would be a more appropriate reward and would maintain the focus on further learning.  Kids take the test to be able to go to college, not to get paid.
• It seems to me that paying for achievement is a frightening road to run.  Only the best and brightest would get paid and that already happens. If we want to use the work analogy, then kids should get paid for showing up.  That’s what most people get paid to do…show up and do a job for a specified period of time.  Only in upper levels are people paid more for productivity or for achieving a goal.  The general work force gets paid for their time.  Period.  So, yeah, kids go to school.  That’s their job.  But there are other ways to help them see that besides paying them.  That’s why kids strive to eventually become adults, to finally earn their own money and be independent.  Isn’t that the real goal of education?  To produce independent, productive, adult citizens of this United States?
• There is a real question here of how can we make academic achievement more palatable to our students?  How can we help them understand the intrinsic rewards we are always blathering on about?  What does that really mean?  Have we structured our educational system to reward all thinkers and inspire children to WANT to do more?  We are just now moving away from a system that waits for children to fail before they receive some kind of special attention.  We are still burdened with a punitive system of accountability that only offers normalcy for those who achieve high standards and spends time and energy on punishments for those who do not.
• Do we really want to employ a business model that rewards the top 2% of the corporation with unimaginable wealth and rewards workers on the bottom level by allowing them to keep their jobs? Our culture has already seen the devastating effects of a materialistic society gone wild.  Money can’t be the answer.  There just isn’t enough of it to go around.  But what about freedom?  What about earning responsibility?  Who would work for the opportunity to determine what your next project would be instead of having it handed to you?  What if rewards were appropriated based on individual goal achievement instead of being at the top of the class?  Those who feel progress=victory will not like an arrangement of such equanimity.  But, what if our children are ready to see the playing field leveled out just a bit?  To see the system tip away from what you can get and towards what you can do would make too much sense.

In my classroom, I often had rewards available such as additional reading time, or computer time (which involved an educational exercise of some sort), or some free time (a truly valuable commodity in an elementary classroom). To me, rewards were a celebration of a goal completed or a recognition that a student has been making good choices.  I used little slips of paper and verbal praise to constantly reward my students and let them know I noticed when they worked and tried.  The little rectangles of paper had some celebration of the student and a place for her/his name.  They placed the papers in a box in the back of the classroom and on Friday we drew names.  Those who got their names drawn were able to choose from the rewards I mentioned above.  Sometimes I included tangibles such as pencils, books or other educational supplies.   Sometimes I would award a student with free time or reading time outright for a particular achievement.  My students understood that everyone was on their own footing.  I did not expect Sue to achieve exactly the same way that Jan did, but I did expect her to improve from where she was.  They were learning self-management skills and how to reward themselves for their own achievements and how to delay gratification for that reward.  These are all necessary adult skills to be independent.

I have to agree that we can’t set up a system where our students expect reward for all of their achievements.  Unless you are already in the upper 5% of the population, that will most likely not happen in the real world after school.  We can, however, set up a system that mirrors what we would like our society to be.  One that rewards hard work with choice and freedom and those rewards in turn allow a person to achieve for their own purposes. “Crazy talk” one might say.

My big question is, how can we do that in a society that produces “Marry a Millionaire”, “My Super Sweet 16″, and “Real Housewives of Orange County”?  We revel in excess.  We wallow in it and flaunt it as a society and make it seem as if this represents a large number of our citizens.  But in reality, 97% of us do not live those lives and have NO CHANCE of ever living those lives.  How can we make our culture more reflective of its people and less reflective of its elite?   When will we draw our young students’ eyes away from the bling they see and desire, to something more achievable, sustainable, and tangible to them?