Let Me Bribe You...

...to do well in school.



Article



I am definitely opposed to this idea. I knew kids in highschool who were paid for their grades. I knew students in highschool who weren't paid for their grades. I was never paid to get good grades.

There are some kids with which nothing will work. No matter what you do, nothing will encourage them to get their work done. I've seen it happen first hand. Parents will try threatening, gold-starring, punishing, and bribing their kids to get their work done, but sometimes it just doesn't work. Paying them isn't going to make it any better. What happens when students aren't paid for their grades any longer. What happens to that motivation when students leave the school where they were in a program that paid them for those grades? What about college? You surely won't get paid to get good grades there. In a Washington Post article, they have come to a similar conclusion. "Paying kids may not help in the short run, either. Roland G. Fryer Jr., who will manage the D.C. program, has himself said that "the jury is still out" on whether cash incentives cause middling pupils to improve" (Liam Julian).
Janet Bodnar, an editor for Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine wrote in her article "High-achieving students will get good grades anyway, so you're wasting your money. Kids who are underachievers fail because they're inconsistent, says child psychologist Sylvia Rimm. So if they slip and get a poor grade, they figure they're not going to get the reward and give up." I agree with her. Like I mentioned earlier, kids who aren't going to try no matter what method you take, aren't going to try when you bribe them with money. I've seen it fail personally.

A certain desertjim agrees in his blog post on goldenapple.org. "The little bit of research that exists was all done on earlier programs. It seems to show that, despite short-term gain, pay for grades may be detrimental in the long-term." This is exactly my sentiment as I've previously stated above. Students aren't going to keep getting paid as they advance through the school system, so that initial motivation disappears and then what happens? Sure, some might keep trying, but my bet is that many will gradually taper off and give up, realising they aren't receiving some sort of benefit out of educating themselves.

Mike Frazier brings up a new point in his blog. "I believe that school will just become a job for students. They will show up and put in eight hours of work to get a pay check at the end of the week. There is no other incentive than that especially if this program is being implemented in schools made up of a poor demographic." If school is just a job for students, then what's left. Once they leave the school system and enter the real world, they're most likely to be disappointed. With the specific program mentioned in the original article, the students are only paid for freshman and sophomore year. The other two thousand dollars they will receive after graduation. Students, especially high school students, aren't especially known for thinking about the future. After all, high school students are invincible. I know I sure was. However, a lot of students might just cut and run with the two thousand after sophomore year. After all, they aren't required to continue, since they would be sixteen by that point.

Basically I'm not a fan of this sort of program, and I think it will fail students in the long run. What happens when the private donors run out of money and have to stop the program. When the funding cuts out, so does any motivation that the students had for getting through high school, and any other grade that implemented this type of program.

Response to Visions of our Future Students

The first video I'd seen, as people mentioned in their blogs (Ryan specifically), but paired with the second video, it brought up an interesting thought. Sure, technology is great to use in the classroom, and I fully support that idea. The question is, how? How should we use technology in a classroom. We are (to-be) English teachers. For math and sciences, it is much simpler. Use the highest-tech calculators, the newest technology to synthesise experiments, et cetera. There are a hundred different ways for other subjects to use technology in the classroom. What are we, as future English teachers, to do about it?

Thinking back on my own experiences, I would love to incorporate technology into my classroom, seeing as I enjoy using it myself. Quite personally, I don't really think slide-shows, and overhead projectors are quite up-to-date anymore.


Ryan suggests digital peer editing. I like it. Of course this depends upon the nature of the school in which I will work, and if I will have a computer lab to which I am able to bring my students.

Online supplementation is another good idea, brought up by Caleb. However, like he stated, that is 'safe.' However, like I mentioned previously, having the means to enact this type of proposal during school hours might be hard to manage. Even today, or five year's time, it wouldn't be fair to expect every student to have a computer in his or her home to use, if this type of thing were to be implemented outside of school hours.


A big problem with this problem is the fact that no one seems to have any solutions. Even the videos don't propose any solutions. I find it, frustratingly so, like many of our problems. We have a method that works. It may not work well, but it works. People see problems and point them out, but they don't offer any solutions, so all it brings is more frustration. Ideally worded, Danielle says, "Overall, the use of technology married with a pledge to create strong teacher-student and student-student relationships will help better educate today's students." I'm not criticising her in the least (I really like what she said), but she, like the rest of us, isn't really sure how to solve the problem either. So we're stuck with a problem and no sure-fire solution.


As for myself? Well, I'm no better than the rest of them. I have no solution either. A class website, interactive homework, a class wiki? I really don't know what solutions to offer. The only ideas that I can offer are what I've previously listed, and the idea of creativity in teaching, using technology, in order to help students become engaged in the material and in the classroom.

Sir Ken Robinson Says...

Ken Robinson, in his very entertaining speech, comes to the conclusion that schools "educate [children] out of creativity." Now... This proposes a problem for us teachers (and to-be teachers), seeing as we educate children. Personally, I do not want to be blamed for creating a classroom devoid of creativity. I plan to teach literature which cannot exist without creativity. Literature depends upon creativity; it is essential. As a teacher of literature, you must allow for that creativity in literary analysis.

I think I would agree with his view that schools have educated the creativity right out of the child. It is true that schools do not allow much room for creativity. Art classes are optional. For many children whose parents want them on the fast track to an Ivy League school, they do not have time for these electives. This coincides with what Ken Robinson had to say about the value placed on creative venues. Arts are at the bottom of the education system. This is proved by the fact that they are electives. Math, science, and the required subjects are, obviously, required for graduation, while drama, music, or art are merely 'for fun' subjects. Thinking back to English classes where we had to make up our own poem or something like that, there were often kids who groaned about how difficult that would be. They preferred math and the more concrete subjects to papers where they knew what was expected of them. With English classes, they had to actually create their own original ideas and then have those ideas graded. It was not concrete, and thus didn't know what was expected of them.

What he said about the fact that students don't go into what they enjoy (If that subject happened to be in the arts) because the subject that they liked was stigmatised and unvalued, I believe is true to a respect. It is difficult to major in art, or to major in drama, or to major in music. Those subjects aren't emphasised in high schools, and if you do not attend a school pertaining specifically to one of those subjects, then it is difficult to major in that subject in college, especially if you want something that is very specified.

I think that, in the classroom, creativity is something that is either applied or not. A teacher can accept a creative interpretation of a novel, or he or she can deny it. If denied, the student will most likely shut down that creativity and follow the pack once again. In that respect, I believe a teacher needs to be very lenient in accepting creativity to allow the students to explore their own thoughts and ideas.

I would look at it from your own point of view. Would you rather attend a class where all of your original ideas are shot down, or would you rather attend a class where everyone has unique, original ideas? The choice should be obvious. Another viewpoint is if you would rather attend a class where a teacher lectures the entire class period or a class where the teacher is using original ideas to get his or her point across to the students in a unique way. I know, personally, I would prefer the latter in both cases.

"Given the Realities of Our Modern Age..."

"...and the demands of our children's future, is it really ok to allow teachers to choose whether or not they incorporate modern technologies into their instruction?"

Choice is kind of a relative term, not to mention from what the teachers choose. Some teachers, as far as technology, could have the choice to choose from something such, oh I don't know, laptops, scanners, and tablets, as compared to something like vhs, overhead projectors, and simple-function calculators. I definitely think that they should make efforts to incorporate modern technology into their classroom. These children will be dealing with technology in their future. In order to become more accustomed to the level of technology with which they will be dealing in their futures, the should have as much experience with it as possible.

So really, as a teacher, I probably wouldn't like the administration butting into my business and telling me what to do in my classroom. However, it really is a necessity for the students to be able to find adequate jobs in the business world. As our world moves on, so do the requirements needed for securing jobs.

I find it difficult to come up with reasons to back up my opinions, however, I would definitely support the use of technology in classrooms. While I grew up in a more affluent are, some of the students are not so lucky and they don't have the access that I did to the newer versions of technology. Everything is slowly coming to depend on technology. Our phones, televisions, computers, et cetera are all becoming more advanced and we rely heavily on them.

So I suppose my bottom line is that I wouldn't support teachers making their own decision on that call, unless it were in favour of technology in the classroom.

Well Come...

I will be the first to admit that I am not a very interesting about which to read. The only thing that might make reading about me entertaining is my snarky sense of humour and cavalier disregard I have for seriousness. (It has its time and place. When writing about myself, it doesn't work. My life is not tragic, it is not sad, morose, deserving of pity, or otherwise. It is something to be celebrated.) I like a good laugh.

Anyway. I hope you are well come, healthy and hale.

I am from Suburbia near the land of Chicago. It's a pretty boring place. Nothing much happens there, and kids think they're hard-core if they hang out in parking lots after dark with their parent's car. I suppose it a sort of complacent domesticity. It's a nice place.

Broad, general, vague questions and bad grammar drive me crazy. Hence, I hate answering these kinds of things. It's tedious.
I am a music person. If I am not listening to music, I always have a tune stuck in my head. I have played the piano for the past thirteen years. I have been endeavouring to teach myself how to play guitar for the past year-ish. And the actual time spent attempting to play has been, in total, approximately a month. I also came into possession of a flute. I would love to learn that as well.

I like words. I enjoy playing with words, I enjoy reading words, I enjoy writing (Writing can also be read as 'typing.') words, I enjoy using pretentious diction. I like big words. This is probably one of the major reasons I went into the literature field. (I have a passion for writing poetry.)

I hope to someday be a teacher in one of these lovely lands of Suburbia. I dream to impart my knowledge and passion unto these young minds with which I will be dealing.

Though really... I just hope to find a job. We'll see where the winds take me. (I'm not usually a type to worry about big things. They work out.) At any rate... I am a fairly relaxed person, though secretly (not so secret any more...) I have wild dreams and see myself doing fantastic things, like being the teacher that all of the kids love. However, those all come to a screeching halt when I remember how horribly I tend to fail when speaking publicly under pressure. So really... we'll see just how well this will go over. Unfortunately, I can't tell the future, so to be cliche, time will tell.

Testing, testing

This here is just a test post. There isn't really anything to say as of yet.