Why (and how) I Pay My Students
I get it. We all want our students to be intrinsically motivated humans who do the right thing all the time because it IS the right thing. We want our students to listen attentively, give their best effort, show respect to others and basically be decent human beings in our class and in the world. In reality, even adults struggle with this. Using a classroom economy to motivate or reinforce appropriate behavior sometimes feels uncomfortably like bribery. This is why my system is enmeshed with educational goals as well as behavioral incentive.
In my classroom, we use Stinnette Swag. I have a large selection of coin manipulatives as well as homemade $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills with campus educator photos substituted for Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton and Jackson. Students earn swag for answering questions, being stellar examples of the principles in our social contract, winning a review game and the like. At the beginning of the year, students decorate their Swag Bag to hold their earnings until it is time to process them.
Depending on my students’ comfort level with counting money, I may begin the year by only giving change such as dimes and pennies. Throughout the year, I increase the complexity by adding in all the coins and then bills up to $20. On Fridays during math class, we pull out the swag for the week and count it. Students then fill out a deposit slip and deposit their earnings with the bank of Stinnette. I have them use their lunch number as their account number on the deposit slip. This offers an additional benefit for those students working to memorize their lunch number. They update their balance on a spreadsheet using their Chromebooks and then they are ready to buy an item at the Stinnette Store.
My store has pencils, stickers, edible treats, small toys and the like. I also let students buy a break pass, lunch pass, or treat pass if they have enough money. Students have to update their balance by indicating how much money they spent at the store so they always know how much swag they have.
When the classroom economy is really moving along smoothly, I introduce checks to the class. I am aware that writing a check is a rare occurrence, but I still run into situations where I have to write a check. Students purchase their store items with a check.
As you can see, this classroom economy goes far beyond just earning points. Students practice counting money, calculating a balance, budgeting money to purchase what they want from the store, and learning how to do basic banking tasks such as completing a deposit slip and writing checks. My students are motivated to participate and follow our social contract at the same time they practice all the skills needed for our financial literacy objectives. Now that’s what I call a win-win!
