Why Even Last Place Deserves a Reward in Education
We celebrate the best grades, behavior and attendance in school. So why do teachers struggle when celebrating effort?
In my first year of teaching I was given simple, but great advice from an experienced teacher on how to motivate my students successfully.
A method which was not based on academic assessments like test scores, but on that more often than not overlooked X-Factor that makes us who we are. Our best selves.
I know what you’re thinking right now— I must be one of those teachers.
A teacher who hands out medals to every place in the race, celebrating last and first in equal measure. But simple things that reward often over-looked qualities, and do, make a massive difference on that student’s attitude to learning.
If I celebrate everyone, won’t that just take the value of the reward down?
Firstly, motivating students is a difficult task, one which every teacher and every parent will struggle with; how do we motivate a young person without patronizing them, and what form should the reward take?
Now, think about the ways in which we reward students. Good grades? Check. High attendance? Check. Homework and assignments completed? Check.
Rarely does ‘trying your best’ ever get a serious look in. So students who may atypically succeed in another stratus of the curriculum not recorded on tests, attendance, or scores, lose out.
Time to change that.
Show the world your ‘Best Me’
The ‘Best Me’ was a statuette akin to an Oscars trophy in my classroom, and I would give it to one student each and every day for them to take home and put on display.
It didn’t celebrate 10/10 in a spelling test, nor did it draw attention to a high attendance that week. Things which for the most part, might be totally outside of a student’s power to change, anyway.
It celebrated something different.
Something invisible.
And the Oscar award was so recognizable that kids knew immediately it was a big deal to receive such an honor, and they took it very seriously.
So while in that first year I used classroom behavior mechanisms like Class Dojo, star charts, marble jars, table leaders and so on, this little reward of my own devices proved the supreme winner.
It was easy, memorable and effective.
So how did I give the reward out? And did it actually work?
Maybe the student played with someone in the yard who was lonely. Or showed great manners to a classroom visitor.
Or they worked very hard on their sums, maybe not achieving 100%, but it was an upwards tracheotomy, but they applied themselves.
It was that initial confidence, the idea and self-belief that you want to harness.
For example, I wouldn’t announce to the classroom “Andrew got 3/10 in his test — that’s amazing!” because the implication here would be the student would be shamed.
Rather, “Andrew had a massive improvement in his work today” would 1) signal to the student I know of his effort, and 2) celebrate it.
There are lots of different ways of keeping the award fresh without it becoming either predictable, patronizing, or embarrassing.
Another instance was a child who academically performed amazingly, but you’d like to highlight something else they are doing well, or improving on. Maybe turn-taking, showing patience, social skills on the playground, skills which yet again don’t get half as much a look-in as standardized testing does.
Kids LOVED it!
Once the clock hit 3pm, there would be an audience around the statue at my desk, an informal ceremony deciding on who would get it that day. Only one student got to take it home each day.
The last thing you want is to create unnecessary competition, but the Best Me was an unseen reward factor, and so didn’t stop the other students who didn’t get it from congratulating whoever did.
One of the best memories of using this kind of award were the parents reactions to it — one father in particular thanked me during a Parent teacher meeting on how much something like that meant for him and his child.
His child wasn’t the best reader, but receiving the award for his effort made him a totally different child at homework time. A new sense of motivation and confidence.
The statue visited all his aunties and uncles houses, he got pictures taken with it at home.
Making your own
In truth, the Best Me can take any form — it will get as much value and admiration as the teacher shows it (but the Oscar statute helps because it’s so noticeable in the public eye)
In a tweet I shared last year, I showed how equally significant and insignificant the trophy can be; I only used one statute — for the entire year. But you could use these awards as keepsakes, give them out weekly, monthly or per term.
The main thing is to use this idea not to celebrate attributes a child will know is valued; but to celebrate and value that something else.
To celebrate that over-looked bit that makes them…them.
