Hi, Monica,
Thanks for taking the time to respond! Nice to meet you!

I can certainly relate to many things you said! Like you, after reading Alfie Kohn and Marvin Marshall, I began to question many of my own teaching practices. I started to analyze specific activities more closely and ask myself questions such as:

What are my real reasons for doing this?
What message does this activity send to my students?
Will this take me to where I say I really want to go?
Will this encourage my students to aim for Level D rather than Level C?
Would I do this in my own family, with my own children?
Is this helping me strengthen my relationships with each one of my students? etc.

In some cases I had to admit that a number of my regular practices, which appeared fun and exciting on the surface, weren’t really so positive after all. That’s when I had to confront my own fears––which basically boiled down to this: Did I really believe that internal rewards could be, as––or more––satisfying than incentives offered by another person? In the end, personal experience with the results of being internally motivated in my own life gave me the courage to leave academic rewards and incentives behind in the classroom too–eventually, without regrets and with a definite sense of freedom and peacefulness.

I spent a long time reflecting on all the effort I had always put into my own teaching and all the resulting satisfaction I had received from being creative in the classroom and doing my best for my students. Could any type of external reward have convinced me to do the same for all those years–-with an equal amount of drive and determination? I realized that the answer was “No.” For me, being internally motivated was always a far more powerful driving force than my monthly paycheck or spoken recognition from my administrators. If this was true for me, could this not also be true for other people and even young children (who, after all have the same innate human characteristics as adults?) Was it not worth finding out? Would my students not be better off in the long run, if I headed in a Level D direction? I took the scary plunge!

I began to focus my efforts on motivating students to do their best by encouraging them to understand the real reasons for doing so and by discovering the real benefits that could be found by putting forth effort to do well in school––or any other arena of life. Marvin Marshall’s Hierarchy provided the concepts and language that allowed me to do that easily, and classroom experience with my students taught me that I was only sidetracking young people from valuable goals if I introduced Level C treats/privileges to entice them.

To my delight, I found that kids were willing to work towards Level D goals with as much, or more enthusiasm as they were for a Level C treat. I found I could be an “effective Level D salesperson” simply because I genuinely believed in the value of my “product.” And besides, I no longer ran into any negative problems such as worrying that I wasn’t evenly or fairly “catching them at being good.” Why not aim for the high level instead of something lower?

However, one stumbling block did remain for me. I found I had a well-engrained “teaching mindset” with regard to fun and treats. Somehow I felt that I could only legitimately offer fun or treats if they had been “earned” or were “well deserved” in some way. At one point, I even packed up many wonderful bags of fun prizes that I had collected to be used as reading incentives and donated them to the public library. I was convinced that they couldn’t be of any use to a teacher who wanted to promote internal motivation.

I think that extreme gesture of “making a break with rewards” was necessary in my journey because the very next day I snapped to attention with the realization that I didn’t have to use fun or treats in a manipulative way. I could simply offer fun and treats generously, as gifts to EVERY child, no strings attached! I could still make my classroom fun. I could still have parties. I could still use food or stickers in connection with my academic program. I suddenly got it! A classroom based on internal motivation doesn’t have to be dreary or completely serious! In fact, how could I motivate students to be excited about learning at school if we never had any fun? That’s when I really felt joyful about my new direction.

These days, my partner and I plan for a lot of fun in the classroom with our students, all the while knowing that when we seek to motivate the kids to stay on task, to do their best performance, or stop idle chatting and pay attention at lesson time, we do it in a way that leads to Level D motivation rather than Level C. We use treats in a different way than we did many years ago. Whereas before we might have had an after school party only for those who had completed all homework assignments in a term, these days we have parties as culminating events to academic themes. For instance, at the end of our Castle and Fairy Tale Theme, we host a special medieval feast and tournament and when we study Nursery Rhymes we make food treats connected to the jingles. Instead of giving a star to only those students who have printed neatly, we give all kids an entire strip of star stickers as part of a lesson highlighting words that contain the “ar” reading chunk (as in the word, “star.”) Instead of promising a piece of candy to those who who get a high mark on their math worksheet, we make candy crafts that look like Thanksgiving turkeys, Halloween ghosts and Valentine mice. If we find tiny toys at a great price we find some way to incorporate them into a phonics or math lesson. Every ten days Zero the Hero arrives in our classroom mailbox with a “zero treat” such as a ring or a lifesaver candy.

The fun and treats are still present of our classroom but the manipulative aspect is completely gone. Fun is for everyone. No child is ever left out and no one has to earn the right to part of treat experience. We feel each child deserves to be part of our classroom fun simply because they are a member of our class. Not only do we feel very good about this switch but the kids are all happy too.

So, rather than tell you how I might feel about Rick Morris’ “credit card program,” I think you will find more valuable answers to your questions by reflecting on your own goals for your teaching and for your students. If you’re anything like me though, you may find that it takes some personal courage to implement your answers! Best wishes!

I have been working on implementing DWS for a few years now, and feel I am getting closer to deeply internalizing the methods and having greater success. I think one of the reasons it has taken me awhile to be completely successful is because of my reluctance to get rid of rewards and incentives. While I understand the harm they can do, for some reason, I have had a hard time letting go of them 100%, because somehow I have it in my head that these are the things that make a 3rd grade class feel “fun” and exciting! Anyway, this year, I decided to try something a little different, which I borrowed from Rick Morris, classroom management “guru.” It is called Credit Cards. Basically, I gave each student an index card onto which they wrote their name. It is each child’s responsibility to keep their card safe but accessible. Whenever I want to acknowledge a student for displaying positive behavior or making a better choice, I stamp their card. I made it clear to the students from the beginning (as Morris suggests) that they won’t be “rewarded” for every positive behavior (as that would be impossible for me to do) and that “credits” will never be given “upon request.” Then, I set a date (about 4 weeks after the cards were first given out) for a class lunch with any student who had 15 credits by that date. At the lunch, I provided drinks and dessert. Any student who didn’t have 15 credits by lunch day just kept their card, and continued building credits until the next date (which I set for about 2 weeks later). The first lunch date has come and gone and now we are working until date #2. I have found this little “acknowledgement system” to be much simpler and less stressful than any other I tried in the past. I tend to give out credits during independent work time, when I see several students getting right to task but others are still chatting or lingering to get their books out. I have also given credits to students after I “catch them” doing a good deed without any prompting (I suppose, when they are doing a level C or D act). Kids do NOT (seem to) compete for credits or brag about credits. Credits are not a huge part of our day. Whole days have gone by where we were too busy and I didn’t bother to give out a single credit, yet I have never heard anyone complain about this. My idea is to continue until everyone in the class has had a chance to have a lunch, and then, possibly, pull the cards for a while, just to have a break from it.

But the obvious question is this: Am I kidding myself to think that this system is not equally detrimental as the other types of reward systems that DWS or Alfie Kohn discuss? What do you think?