Student Recognition Programs | Dynamite Lesson Plan

Here’s another topic for my teacher journal and I hope to get some external input in the comments on it. In every class there should be some sort of rewards system. Kids are small adults and adults work for rewards, why shouldn’t they? Incidentally, have you heard that thieves are stealing credit cards from your wallet without even taking them out? Check out a rfid shielded wallet that protects from that sort of thing. In teaching, I have found the PC and mainstream way most teachers take is the way of monetary rewards. Kids follow the rules and get junk the teacher buys with her/his own money or other sources. There is a problem I see with this monetized rewards system. If kids do right to get a tangible physical reward, they will only do right when they can get a reward. This is a poor way to prepare kids for life because many times in life we are not rewarded monetarily for doing the right thing.

I prefer non monetary rewards. When I was a Pizza Hut manager, the trainers told us that people will do more for a compliment than they will for a slight raise. People want to be seen. Again, students are small people so why wouldn’t they behave the same way grownups do? Throughout the day, I make sure I am giving high fives and compliments when they are warranted. I don’t go out and buy a bunch of monetary “prizes” for my students. Once in a while I will buy my kids stuff but I keep this few and far between because I know training them to crave non-monetary rewards is a more suitable training for the world we all live and work in.

It’s possible I’m a little bitter because in 1997 something happened in my classroom that really changed me. I bought a small mechanized Harley Davidson motorcycle toy to give away at the end of the month. (I also regularly bought monetary rewards for my class at that time). The $40 toy was stolen off my desk and I never retrieved it. The kids never revealed who and how it was taken. I decided pretty soon after that event that it was not the best idea to have monetary rewards in the classroom. That’s my view, what do you think?

There are hundreds of student recognition programs and they exist because teachers know they work. A colleague of mine spends a lot of her hard-earned dollars on certificates and treats and even trophies for her kids. I can tell you her kids benefit greatly and in turn, so does she as a teacher. I use trophies as well, only I don’t buy them. I prefer to get them for free through donations from families and the local thrift shop. You don’t even have to give them away. They travel all around the classroom for the best of the week in given areas.

Recognition in the classroom is a must. The more ways you can recognize students, the better they will feel taking risks and working to their potential. Without recognition for students, the class will turn dull, the kids will lose interest and not challenge themselves, and even you as a teacher will start to feel bogged down and tired. This brings up an interesting subject for another post, Recognition for teachers is also highly fruitful and should not be overlooked.

Ours is a job where we must be thinking all the time about “what’s in it for them.” I know some people don’t teach that way. Some people feel kids should be self-motivated. I love those students who can but the fact of the matter is, most cannot. It is our job to teach the academic standards and as much about the world as we can. At the same time we MUST be cheerleaders and we do this through classroom recognition. Letting kids know they are doing a good job and filling up their self esteem should be a daily activity in a classroom. Here are a few ways I recognize kids in the classroom: