Rewards

As a teacher and parent, it is common to get in the mind set of offering rewards.  Rewards come in a lot of ways in schools.  For some teachers/students the big rewards vary but can be grades, comments, candy, parties, extra time doing something, AR prises ect.

As a general rule, I struggle with tangible rewards.  I by nature am cheep (our family of 4 must live off a teachers salary), an environmentalist (so I hate to give things that will be thrown away in a matter of days), and I am staunchly opposed to using food as a reward or punishment (I will go in to detail about this latter.) 

Regardless of how I feel, many of my students have grown to expect rewards or to get something for doing what is expected of them.  While feeding my addiction of listening to TED talks I came across this TED Talk on rewards and I felt like I was finally affirmed about giving kids (or anyone) a tangible reward when looking for quality work. 

Why would I even bother taking issue with rewards?  You might wonder...  First off I hate food as a reward or punishment. For many, many reason. 1st  the state I live in has a major obesity epidemic and with that the side effects of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.  The last message I want to send to my kids is "gee, you are so smart, here is something to clog your brain and reduce your ability to concentrate." Also, food is a need and it is not Ok to use a need as a reward or punishment.  I could not imagine telling my child that they get to have shelter or shoes because they are good.  The third major reason I hate food is a reward is that I personally have a so that we adopted at 3.5 years old who had nearly starved to death. Food is not a toy to him. Ever!  If it is a reward, he would do anything for it, moral or not.  I don't ever want him to think that bad kids don't get food and good kids do, because that is just not true in the real world.  Many kids starve at no fault of their own. 

One of the other major reasons I do not like to give rewards for task is the vast amount of data that suggest that providing or offering a reward for a higher level task, creative thinking, or a task involved in making the world better, does not generate high quality work.  It shifts the purpose of the work from the real reason why a child should do something, to doing it for a piece of candy. 

So, this is one of my teaching philosophy, but as a parent of two six year olds and one with major OCD issues revolving around technology, and I have been needing something to help manage his technology time and reward him for participating in non-technology related activities.  Thus, I had a need for a system to keep me honest and keep him from obsessing. 

  Every weekday he gets 15 min of iPad time and one movie and it must be after 5pm.  All school work must be done, rooms clean and everything that we expect from him must be done.  On the weekends he gets 30 min of iPad time each day.  What I have come up with for rewards is a system of tickets that are each worth one minute extra or iPad time or he can trade in 15 for a new game.  When I have a task that is not a higher level thinking task I offer tickets.  For example:  cracking 10 pecans in worth one ticket, picking up sweet gum balls off of the garden area 1 ticket/(small) bucket. 

What this has done for my son is provide him with a clear visual for extra time earned.  It is not a thing I have to buy, food to manipulate him with, nor will it be something that ends up the landfill. Again, I do not use them for higher level thinking.  I do offer the tickets to both boys.  Tickets can also be revoked to bad attitudes, talking back, not doing what is required .  My favorite is if one boy is mean to the other one, or messes up something the other one created, the offender must give a ticket to the offended.  It sure does help with home sanity. 

There you have it.  My random tip of the day.  I hope it helps someone out there who is struggling with the issue of rewards.  If you did not watch the TED talk linked above I highly recommend it, as it will make all of this make much more sense.