Classroom Behavior Charts Need To Be Retired
When my daughter started kindergarten two years ago, I was immediately turned off by the idea of the behavior chart that was used in her classroom. A big colorful chart was hanging in the room with each child’s name on a clip. At the beginning of each day, the children would all start on the color green. If they were caught displaying positive behaviors, they would clip up to the colors blue, purple and pink. If they were caught displaying negative behaviors, they would clip down to the colors yellow, orange and red. Throughout the day the teacher would call out children to move their clips up or down based on their behavior.
The purpose of a behavior chart is to help a teacher regulate classroom behavior and give students a visual reminder of how they are doing throughout the day. The problem is that everyone is motivated differently. Public praise and criticism may motivate some students while having the opposite effect on others.
In my daughter’s case, she became fixated on the behavior chart. She noted that the same three students made it to pink much more often than others in the classroom. Even though most days my daughter ended on a positive color, she was still disappointed that she was rarely ever seen as a “pink” student. She also talked about the students who were always clipping down to orange and red. Even though I had never met a particular student in her class, I knew he was labeled as the “bad” kid.
I finally decided to ask for a meeting with the teacher after I found a drawing in my daughter’s backpack of the behavior chart. My daughter had listed all the kids’ names in the class next to a color. When asked about it, she said she listed the students’ names next to the color they usually ended on each day. This drawing confirmed my concerns about the effectiveness of the behavior chart and that it may be doing more harm than good. I addressed the following concerns about the behavior chart with my daughter’s teacher:
1. It was not a tool to improve behavior.
The fact that my daughter drew a chart and placed each students’ name next to the color they typically ended on each day meant there was no real change in student behavior. Day to day each student may have ended on a different color, but my kindergartener had already picked up on the pattern of where each child was most likely to end on any given day. The behavior chart was only pointing out the behaviors, but not addressing the root of the problem to reduce the occurrence of the undesired behaviors.
2. It was placing labels on the students.
The chart my daughter drew showed how she had learned to label each student in the classroom. Visually seeing this chart every day created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The term self-fulfilling prophecy describes a phenomenon where an expected outcome occurs because of the belief it will occur. This works in both positive and negative ways. The “pink” students were labeled as good, so they acted accordingly. The student who was constantly labeled as “orange” or “red” continued to act in the way that had become expected of him.
3. It was not an effective motivational tool.
My daughter was so concerned about having to clip down in front of her classmates that she became fixated on the chart causing it to be a distraction. She told me that she felt like she was always being “caught” doing something bad, rather than being “caught” doing good things. She pointed out that she would purposely try to do something helpful or good in front of her teacher hoping to be “caught” displaying the positive behavior. Not only was the motivation to display the positive behavior only an extrinsic motivator, but when it was not noticed and rewarded by clipping up, the motivation disappeared.
4. It was too public and therefore caused humiliation and shame.
Calling out students publicly for their mistakes can cause shame and humiliation. As someone who works in the field of human resources, I could not help but think how badly this chart would go over in the workplace. Can you imagine a boss publicly pointing out employees’ mistakes in front of their co-workers and then further humiliating them by making them physically move their name down on a chart in front of their peers? What purpose would this serve? And although some people enjoy being publicly praised, others may be made uncomfortable by the attention. As both a child and as an adult, I have always been embarrassed by receiving too much attention, whether it was positive or negative attention. I was a straight-A student who always followed the rules. When a teacher would publicly praise me in front of my classmates, I would feel embarrassed and worry that other students would resent me. More than once I was referred to as the “Teacher’s Pet” and a suck-up. This did not motivate me to continue this behavior. Instead, I would try to minimize my accomplishments and never wanted to raise my hand to answer questions in class.
5. Only the end of day result was recorded
My daughter would come home with a behavior chart calendar filled in with the color she ended on that day. At the beginning of the year, she was coming home with the colors green, blue or purple on most days. Then one day she came home and the color yellow was filled in on her calendar. When asked about the behavior that caused her to move to yellow, she explained that she had moved up to blue in the morning for being on task, but then had moved down two times during the day for being talkative. I learned that part of the reason she was rarely making it to pink on the behavior chart was that even though she clipped up during the day she would also clip down for being too talkative in class. Up until this point I had never addressed the overly talkative behavioral issue with my daughter at home because the only information I was given was that she ended the day on a positive color.
My daughter’s teacher had the best of intentions when deciding to use a behavior chart in her classroom. It is hard to manage that many young minds in a classroom without having some system in place to enforce classroom rules. In researching other methods to suggest during the meeting with my daughter’s teacher I found so many alternatives that focused more on modeling and reinforcing the positive behaviors that were expected for the classroom.
Behavior charts are not the only way to manage classroom behavior. I was fortunate that my daughter had a very compassionate teacher who was open to listening to my concerns and who took those concerns to heart. By the end of the school year, the behavior chart had been retired from her classroom.
