Stars

This past week I started trying to bribe my kids with stars for good behavior. One of my schools is a Z.E.P.--zone d'éducation prioritaire, meaning the school is in a tougher area. There are noticeable behavior differences between the two schools. None of my kids are "bad"; they're all really friendly and get excited about English, but the kids in the Z.E.P. school can't quiet down, are often excessively competitive, and sometimes even get into physical tussles with each other. It's an environment that makes it hard to teach, and consequentially they don't learn the lessons as quickly.

The way the teachers deal with it is straight up punishment. They yell at the kids, send them to the corner, or give them black marks that add up to no recess or copying lines. Sometimes, I find too that the way the teachers talk about the students is sort of disrespectful, for example, “Well they have no constraints at home so having to sit down at school must be a struggle,” or, “Are you deaf or what? I told you to put the notebook at the corner of your desk!” I mean, it’s totally out of my place to criticize, because the kids do honestly have a hard time behaving, and what do I know about teaching?

But let me put on my know-it-all hat for a moment.

Generally you can get organisms to act the way you want either by rewarding good behavior or punishing undesired behavior. Think tax breaks for donations and fines for speeding respectively. The more someone receives a reward for something, the more they will perform that act. People also avoid behavior that is punishable, but the disadvantage of using punishment is that if the authority is not around, the person has no incentive to follow the rule.

It seems to me, that with my test run of the stars system has gotten my class to quiet down a lot more than yelling at them or sending someone to the corner (“Tu es puni!”) But I have to be careful. One of the drawbacks of giving rewards is that behavior that might have originally been inherently rewarding no longer seems attractive once you’ve been offered a prize or a payment for that action. For instance, pre-schoolers who got certificates for coloring were less likely to choose to color on their own accord during their free time, because what’s the point if you don’t get a certificate? So I risk undermining the regular teacher’s authority a bit, I think, since they won't be giving out stars. And because like I said they are already very competitive, I don’t want to make the number of stars another issue. I think what I have to do is make it clear they don’t earn points by getting more answers right—that it’s based on calm behavior—and reward the class as a whole if depending on if they have good or bad days.