Day 11 - Reward System

Today was another relatively typical day at my school. I ran the quickmaths for the class and we did English work as well as other numeracy work. The students got to write in their journals about camp and continued their spelling work. The spelling program is great in my school and I will discuss it more as time goes on. The main thing that has stuck out to me over the last week or so is how much the rewards system has improved the students' behavior. I think it says a lot about the system here in Australia in general. There's a greater emphasis on "doing the right thing" through the possibility of rewards rather than the certainty of punishment. Kids are always trying to get their way through some form of reward system they set up arbitrarily (the "do this and i'll be your best friend" system, or "do this and I'll give you a dollar). In the grand scheme of things these rewards don't amount to much because the next day, those same students will argue or the one who received the dollar will have spent it on the way home from school that day. But when there's a build up to something that the kid actually wants, there can be an actual, long-term shift in behavior instead of a temporary one that is fleeting and short-term. In the beginning of this term our students were given the choice of what their culminating reward would be for the end of term. They are now striving to do the right thing so that they can end up with the reward that they chose. I think we spend far too much time in the states with threats and punishments while good behavior goes unnoticed. In most cases, children want attention regardless of the form it comes in. When they see that people in the public eye get more time on the news when they do something bad, it sends a mixed message to kids who otherwise would behave and act properly. It's not a conscious decision to do something wrong but the messages that they're getting aren't convincing them that the right thing is always right. If there could be a shift in the way that we as educators approach the reward/punishment system, maybe the behavior problems that we see in the US will begin to dissipate and test scores will begin to rise.