Rewards

Thanks to soo many generous donations of school supplies, I've got TONS of
stuff for the learners now - so much in fact that there's no way I could
judiciously give it all out to my learners, so I decided to share with my
colleagues.

I admit - I was concerned that they would keep the supplies for themselves,
so I borrowed an idea from another volunteer. I happen to have a set of
fake US money, so I distributed an equal quantity to each teacher and
explained that when they want to reward a learner, they should give them a
bill and later they can turn that into me for a prize. A $1 might get them
a pencil whereas a $50 might be worth a set of markers, etc. Each teacher
got 4 1's, 3 5's, 3 10's and 1 50. I got a couple of interesting
questions...
"Well, we are supposed to reward learners who get an A or a B, but no one
gets an A or a B."
"So I give this to learners with the highest scores?"

I had to explain that it's important to reward class participation,
improvement, attendance, effort as well as performance. And of course,
grades are relative.

Anyway, I expected I might get a few learners coming into the "store" here
and there. But guess what, 3/4 of the cash was distributed YESTERDAY...even
the 50's. Now you'd think they would've saved them for an exam score, or
taken some time to gauge improvement over the term, etc. etc. But nope!
I'm speculating here, it's like they just wanted to get rid of it all as
fast as possible. But hopefully some thought went into it.

Now as I type this I have to remind myself that that is simply how it goes
here. When people get paid, they spend it all right away. It's a culture
of not knowing when the next dollar or meal is going to come, so use it all
the minute you get it.

The bright side, I suppose, is I'm enabling the other teachers to reward
their learners. And hopefully I've got them thinking of ways they can
continue to praise and recognize. Paralleling this, I've written up my
various reward programs (Learner of the Week, Jackson Stars, etc.) (it was
requested by another teacher actually!) and it will be distributed amongst
the staff.

So hopefully, maybe, things will ever so slowly turn from a consciousness
focused on punishment to one of reward.