And I am not so proud.
While at Georgetown I had various jobs that placed me in the classroom. I also took several classes focused on education and children. After getting accepted into MTC, I started thinking about how I wanted my classroom to run. Taking from my experiences and classes, I decided that I was not going to give out food in my class, especially candy, as a reward. In just three weeks, I have already broken this promise to myself.
Why do I believe in not giving food as a reward? There are several reasons. First of all, it connects food with rewards for children. They assume that if they do something well that they should treat themselves. This can lead to eating disorders as well as obesity. However, more importantly I am concerned with the diets of children in low income communities. Many of them forgo lunch at school (yes it may be disgusting and low quality) and eat nothing but processed chips and candy instead. Who knows what students eat for breakfast and dinner, but they are eating junk for lunch. Therefore, I do not need to add to this poor diet by suppling children with cookies, chips, and suckers for answering a question in my class.
Well, I failed. I gave my class Dum Dums earlier this week. Here are my thoughts: I need a reward system. Rewards work way better than punishments any day. So I do need a system. But coming in with “healthy” food options, wont work...yet. If you give them things that they want first, eventually you can slowly start introducing new things. Get them to like you and then try changing things.
Side note: I do realize that rewards systems don’t have to center around food. You can give extra credit points, pencils, and other random small gifts that students love. I plan to experiment with these items in the fall as well.
I still believe that connecting food to rewards is bad. But I realized that there are bigger battles for my to fight. When I enter the classroom in August, I will have to gain control of my classroom before I try changing anything. Right now, I need to choose which fights I want to fight because I wont have energy to fight them all. Perhaps at some point, I will be able to say I have a “Food-Free” rewards system in my room or one that only has “healthy snack options”. But for right now, that is not me. I want to focus on getting my class under control and getting them to trust and respect me before I worry about life changing diets.
They say the way to a man's heart, or students in this matter, is through his or her stomachs. I am not opposed to giving candy out to students. I know that sometimes if you give me some candy, you will have my attention for at least a little while. I agree, it could be healthy snacks in class but at the same time, whatever you have to do to gain a relationship with your students will be forever greatful.
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