Essay On Student Reward Culture

1a. Note something in the reading that was something you did not know.
I was surprised to learn about the research indicating the importance of the pause between the teacher’s question and the student’s response (page 131). The author of the research, Mary Budd Rowe found that most teachers waited for only a second for a student response to their questions before calling on another students, reframing the question or providing the answer. She discovered, however, that when those periods of silence lasted three to five seconds, several valuable changes occurred in students’ behavior: responses lengthened, the number of “I don’t know” answers decreased, students gave more evidence to support their answers and the correctness of their answers …show more content…
1b. Note something in the reading that confirmed the ideas you had about students, adolescents, or teachers.
On page 113, Jones refers to book written by Alfie Kohn (1996) Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes and highlights that “there are serious disadvantages associated with too heavy an emphasis on rewarding behavior, especially behavior that many students could and would demonstrate without the rewards”. I personally think that school reward culture – the practice of handing out large numbers of stickers, points and treats harm education and promote the view that students can get something for nothing. Students often get rewards for the most mundane “achievements”, such as remembering to bring to school what was expected, displaying table manners or for siting down quietly. I was raised in the culture where there were no rewards and children were expected and demanded to follow the rules, say good morning first or call adults Sir/Madam. Adults modeled these behaviors with their lives to us and we never received any rewards for what was expected/obvious. Children used to help one another very often without