Recognizing and Rewarding Responsible Behavior
No discussion of consequences would be complete without examining posi- tive consequences: how to respond to students—individual students or a whole class—who are meeting expectations. Canter and Canter (2001) recommend three guidelines for positive consequences: they should be things teachers are comfortable with, that students like, and that comply with school and district policies. Rewards might run the gamut from specific verbal praise (“Very nice job of managing your participation in the small group discussion and including everyone in the conversation”), a chance to be the line leader or the messenger for the day, a “good news” note, a postcard or call home, a positive note sent home addressed to the student, or a ticket that entitles the student to “purchase” items in the class store.
There is a case to be made that good behavior should not be rewarded; it is expected and should be the norm, so there should be no reward system. Nev- ertheless, with certain classes where discipline problems are an issue, explicit reward systems can play a useful role.
Mendler and Curwin (1999) note that some rules can have only positive conse- quences when followed. They cite an example of a middle school teacher who had a rule that paper airplanes could not be thrown in class during instructional time. The consequence for every week of no airplane throwing was that the class would have a paper airplane throwing contest. They report that “this creative contract stopped paper airplane throwing for the year” (p. 82). They believe there should be at least one positive consequence for each rule. In their earlier work, Mendler and Curwin (1983) suggested an approach to positive consequences
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R 143
PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | DISCIPLINE
that relies more on social praise delivered in private. They like to catch students being good and deliver both positive and negative consequences quietly, so only the receiving student can hear. Thus when the teacher is bending over a stu- dent to say something privately, the rest of the class doesn’t know whether it’s something like, “You have continued talking to neighbors despite two warnings. The consequence is you’ll have to stay after class with me and work out a plan to avoid this behavior” or “You’ve been focusing on your work and written two balanced sonnets this afternoon. That’s what I call being productive!”
In Tools for Teaching: Discipline • Instruction • Motivation (2013), Fred Jones concisely describes a successful system he calls Preferred Activity Time (PAT) for recognizing cooperation and efficiency in student behavior. PAT is not free time. It is structured time for an activity the students really like to do; it is commonly a lively game put to use as a review of academic material, but many other choices are possible as well. With appropriate modifications, it works equally well with secondary classes. With students, Jones calls this system “Re- sponsibility Training” because they are learning to be responsible with time in everything they do (not dawdling, off-task, or fooling around).
PAT is free. The generous teacher gives the class 30 minutes for use on Friday each week (or 10 minutes each day); the rhythm of this choice depends on the particular class and their capacity to defer gratification. The real hook of the system is students’ ability to increase PAT with bonus PAT.
Class, before you get out of your seats, let me tell you what I want you to do during this lesson transition. First, hand in your papers by laying them on the corner of my desk. Then if you need to sharpen your pencils, this is the time to do it. If you need a drink of water, this is the time to get it.
I want my cleanup committee to erase my boards and straighten up the books on the shelf. I want everybody to pick up any paper you see laying around the room and get your desks back on their marks.
I will give you two minutes to get this done. But you know from past experience you can get it done in half-a-minute. So, let’s see how much time you can save. All of the time you save will be added to PAT. Let’s check the clock. [Pause until the second hand passes 12.] Okay, let’s begin. (Jones, 2013, p. 266)
Skillful teachers work the room to prevent any “bootleg reinforcement” for fooling around that peers might deliver. In these pages, Jones gives a number of subtle tips about how to make the class successful and concludes the scenario by adding 1:17 to the classes starting total of 30 minutes.
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R144
PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | DISCIPLINE
Despite generous allotments of time for transitions, student don’t always “win” a bonus, and 5 seconds over the set time will become a minus on the tally for PAT that is always on display. However, time loss of PAT should not be used as a con- sequence when a teacher can apply body language instead. The only time that doesn’t apply is for high-rate disruptions (out of seat, talking) when the teacher is seated and working with a small group.
All the pluses and minuses of PAT are noted by the teacher with the same neu- tral affect we will see in the “Body Language of Meaning Business” section (see p. 149). The implied message is, “This is just the way it is. You, the class, are in charge of whether PAT is going up or down. You’re in control.”
Jones has sections in his book and on his website for desirable activities for PAT at all grade levels and a section on how to deal with students who are will- fully sabotaging the class. We recommend this section and, in fact, his whole book. Jones’ PAT is a well-scripted version of the Good Behavior Game, a time-tested form of recognition with 40 years of research supporting its power (Flower et al., 2014).