Should teachers.......

[Cinders]

be rewarding our children with pop, candy and fastfood? DS (6th grade at the middle school) brought home a paper to be read and signed by parents yesterday. It stated the 6th grade teachers decided to start a reward system for the students. Each day the students will be given $5 in "school currency" to be stabled into their planner books. If a student misbehaves anytime throughout the day he or she will have a dollar taken away. At the end of the nine weeks the students may take the dollars and trade them in for pop, candy, or fastfood......or school supplies.....like any of them will do that. This really jerks my chain.....it was only the first day of school so its not like they could have already had a horrible experience with bad behaviour yet. I signed the paper but added that I was not happy with the program. What does everyone think? Should our schools be rewarding our kids this way? Do we need more encouragement from the schools to eat junk food?

 

[pumba]

they took their stash and got pizzas ...not a bad meal in itself....and a soda...

 

[kejoda]

My sons teacher has a rewards program but it was for homework passes. If they earned one they could use it if they forgot homework or if it wasn't neat enough. They never got excused from it completely they would just be given a extra day to turn it in. It also could be used if you had something else going on and you couldn't get it done. those had to be preexcused though and was more strict. One child wanted to use it for Monday night football but that just wasn't a good enough excuse. We thought that it was kind of funny though.

 

[SeaShelley]

I can relate to your frustration. My DS's school gives hockey tickets (our local semi-pro league) for making it through a quarter without a detention or suspension!

Gee, don't you remember when behaving was expected, not rewarded??

 

[Pooh93]

I can relate. Last year when dd started kindergarten (at the same parochial school I graduated from many years ago) she was given treats for bringing a worksheet back and completed, if she got good stickers for 4 out of 5 days, she got to pick something from the treasure box. If they were good in church, they were rewarded with suckers. My initial thoughts were, boy have things changed here! The nuns/lay teachers would have just looked at us and we would have straightened up.

I don't agree with all of these rewards. For reading, if they read so many books, they get free coupons to pizza hut, six flags etc. Granted I did like the free ticket, but I want my kids to love reading for the sake of reading, not because they are going to get something free.

I notice now too that parents have to sign off on every piece of paper brought home and had to sign and verify that every book sent home was read. I can't comprehend parents not going over homework with kids particularly when paying for the child's education, but it must happen. I guess not only have the schools changed, the parents have too.

 

[gepetto]

I don't see anything wrong with kids having fast food or treats on occasion. It's not like the school is giving it out every day. Incentive rewards like that work for a lot of kids.

If you do not like the program for your child, tell the school you don't want him to participate.

 

[BrerMom]

I can't comprehend parents not going over homework with kids particularly when paying for the child's education, but it must happen.

Well, it's obvious you're one of the "good" parents. It's so sad, but a larger percentage of parents every year don't come to conferences and won't return my phonecalls. It certainly is a different world.

I buy stuff for my classes. I reward them for being on-task, doing a great job, etc, but it's really for behavior. If they're on-task, they're not causing trouble. Sad, isn't it?

 

[A kid at heart]

Has your kid never been to Mcikey D's for a happy meal? is it that bad to let him earn a free one? Kids work hard in school these days, let him have the treat.

 

[RNMOM]

I dislike this all the way around. Life does not reward you for doing the right thing.

 

[Sharon A.]

I bet the fast food passes are being donated by the fast food chain. I'm sure if you wanted to donate some other prizes, the teacher would be more than happy to include those too.

If it bothers you, you should tell your son he can't choose those prizes. It sounds like there are other choices too, like the school supplies.

 

[bfeller]

Things have changed since we were in school. There are a lot more behavior problems now than what I remember when I was in school. I sub and have seen quite a lot. You would be surprised at how many times I have heard about a well deserved punishment/detention that a child has earned and then the parent calls and makes every excuse in the world why their student should not serve the detention. There are quite a few parents in the world today that do not back the discipline system that a school has in place. Instead they make excuses for their child and why he/she did or did not do what was expected, often blaming someone else for their childs behavior or missed assignment. I believe(this is my opinion) that this the reason that so many educators today have come up with a reward system for positive results in their classroom. They also need to make the rewards something that the kids like. How would school supplies work in our own family reward system. Probably not very well. I believe that an educator should do whatever it takes to be successful.

 

[eeyore0062]

I have no problems with positive reinforcement, which this is. Whatever works to help the teachers keep the class in order, so those who want to learn can!

 

[pixiedust218]

My DD's teacher did a reward system, which worked very well for their class(4th grade). They had to earn 100 points (no time limit). If the class behaved while walking through the hallways, either to gym or the library they were given so many points, behaving in class without yelling out so many points, etc. When they reached their 100 points the children voted on what they wanted, either an ice cream party, pop-corn party, and extra gym class that week or even an arts and craft party, usually Friday afternoon the teacher would supply whatever the kids voted on. This came out of her pocket, and she was sooo happy to do this for the kids. I was a class mother for this class and the children were soooo behaved. They all worked together towards something which was nice.

 

[disykat]

I'm glad to see that there are others that feel as I do. At our school my kids get candy EVERY DAY. This is not just occasional rewarding, it is constant. Some teachers are worse than others. When my oldest was in first grade, he saved up enough candy by eating only one a day that he had enough for one piece everyday all summer. He only came up with that scheme about a month before school got out and he saved enough.

I substitute teach and manage to do it without giving out candy. It's not easy, since they are so used to it, but I refuse to be party to the "what's in it for me" mentality that we are teaching our children, not to mention the fact that experts have been saying "don't use food as a reward" for years. There are a lot of ways to "reward" children that are actually logical - you waste less classtime, you get more recess- etc. I don't see why candy became such a highly used reward.

On that same subject, I don't understand why kids are allowed to eat anything they want - whatever happened to regular meals and planned snacks? As a parent I don't really want by kids having an endless source of junkfood and I like to be aware of what they're eating.

I am not against all reward programs. I think they can be very selectively used to elicit a behavioral response. I am just against what I see as a dependence on rewards to achieve.

 

[Saffron]

I'm all for it!!

As an Elementary Ed. student, I've seen every sort of reward program for every sort of reason. The ones that work the best are those that are started for a reason, as in individiual reward programs that are implemented in the hope of bringing about a specific behavior change in an idividual student, or random class reward programs that reward the class for behaviors conducive to learning.

The best reward program I saw was one implemented by one of my cooperating teachers. She would write numbers, used as points, on the board, randomly, either with negative or postive symbols. They were always small numbers/points, somewhere between 1- 10. After she awarded the number, she would explain why she gave the class that specific amount of points. At the end of the week, the class would take time to add all the positive numbers to the previous week's score, then subtract all the negative numbers. Once they reached the number 90, she would reward them with 90 minutes of time to have a special class that the kids voted on -- it could be a gym class, a science class, an art class. During that time, they would do activities that the children voted on, listen to music they voted on, have juice and cookies they voted on etc. What I liked about the system, was that the students never knew when minutes would be added or subtracted, so they were pretty well behaved the majority of the time. I knew she was a cool and good teacher the first day I walked into her room. Her entire classroom is decorated from ceiling to floor in Disney anything and everything!

 

[whirlsy]

are you trying to tell me that you wouldnt let your child have junk food at all in 9 weeks? I think its a good idea after all when I was a kid I lived on junk food and so did most of you out there, as for rewarding kids for being good and doing their job in school, I say whatever works, after all in the real world we get rewarded by getting raises and bonuses for doing a great job why shouldnt they.

 

[polyfan]

I can't believe how many people don't want their child to earn rewards. Many teachers are spending their own money for these items for your child. If you dont want your child to participate then let the school know. Maybe it would be a good idea to visit a classroom for a few days and see why reward systems are in place.

 

[dalepool]

rewards are a part of life. I think it is OK. Rewards teach students that getting good grades, attending class, and behaving has previledges. As I stated before I'm glad teachers have these programs and bless alot of teachers for they usually have to fund these reward programs out of their own pockets....And no I'm not a teacher--Just the grateful parent of a daughter who also thought the reward programs were cool.

PattyN

 

[Pooh93]

There are quite a few parents in the world today that do not back the discipline system that a school has in place.

That I believe and from talking to alot of teachers, they don't get alot of backing from their own administration either.

And even though I don't totally go for all of it, I am not a teacher, and after seeing throughout last year how kids behave/misbehave who knows what I would do if I were in that situation! I might be making them root beer floats everyday! And yes, I made donations to the classroom last year and gave the teacher and teacher's aide each cashier's checks (to hopefully spend on themselves) at the end of last school year, because I recognize that most of what they do comes out of their own pocket. So, I'm really not that callous!

 

[dizneegirl]

Originally posted by RNMOM
I dislike this all the way around. Life does not reward you for doing the right thing.

Actually, it does.

In some situations, if you choose the right thing, you live... if you choose wrong, you die.

Then there's always the rule of karma... or the threefold law... what goes around comes around...



When I was in 3rd/4th grade, I was far ahead of my classes... that left me VERY bored in school, and I really didn't want to do homework. If my parents hadn't bribed me, I probably WOULDN'T have done it, either. Maybe sad, but definitely true. I wasn't learning anything, it was just boring... but to do it to get a reward... that was worth it to me. In 4th grade, our teacher actually had a points/reward system... we had an auction for various "prizes" whoever bid the most points won. So, it's been going on for a long time...

Kind of like going to the dentist's office (or doctor's) and getting a small toy or piece of sugarless gum. Really no harm... but something to look forward to after something distasteful.

Hey, if it gets the word in one ear, and keeps it from going out the other long enough to maybe learn something, I'm all for it!