Our big girl got her very first Principals award!!
Our school has a reward system where by you earn yourself a 'mini merit' by showing Respect, Responsibility or Personal Best. You need to earn 20 mini merits to earn yourself a Merit Award, and 100 mini merits will see you get a Principals award.
Whilst I think the concept is good, I don't think it's a particularly fair system. In fact the whole thing just makes me so annoyed. Some teachers hand them out freely, giving credit for small things and praise where it should go, where others just don't give many at all. For example last year it took poor Bib until almost term 4 to earn herself 20 mini merits, whilst her bf in another class had 100 by the middle of the year?? I know she's not perfect, but surely she deserved more than 20! And there was even one boy who by the end of kindy hadn't made it to 20? Surely the aim of the mini merits is to encourage them to to well, encourage them to WANT to do well?
Oh man...the whole thing bugs me.
So when Bib came home beyond excited, announcing how she'd finally earned herself a Principals Award, we were thrilled for her. It was something we were going to celebrate.
Pip took the day off so we could all attend the assembly and help give her the recognition she so deserved. She was so proud :) You know that little grin they do when they are about to burst inside and yet don't want to give away too much.......that was her from the moment she saw us all sitting at the back of the hall :)
Congratulations beautiful girl x you earned it x
Does your school reward behaviour? Do they have a system that's fairer than ours?
nope - got issues with ours for same reason. Have a really bright good kid who is disappointed every week when doesnt get an award. Try so hard to talk about how its good to just do all these things anyway without the need for an award but hard lesson to learn. And yes huge inequities across classes and teachers. Ours are accumulative also so coming in to the school late doesnt help....a year less of awards to add up for the big ones. And the whole issue of rewarding for the smallest things really backfires (research to support this too). School really sucks sometimes. Takes the love of learning away and becomes just a sausage factory supressing kids inner drive and enthusiasm to learn I think. Hmm sorry for the rant - just have issues with concept and downfalls of school system at the moment
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your little wander tomorrow ;-)
ReplyDeleteOh yeah congratulations to your big girl for all of the hard work and effort she went to, to get her first principals award, so so exciting. I hear what you are saying about how some teachers freely give them out while others don't I suppose some have higher expectations than others, but these types of systems all seem to have a flaw in them. At our school we don't seem to have a behaviour reward system that I know of but what they do have is a 'Student of the Week' badge that every girl in the class gets a chance to wear over the year which is pretty special. I hope you are all keeping well. Have a great week. xx
ReplyDelete