I blogged about this yesterday on my personal blog http://deepthinking.blogsome.com
I hope you will go there and continue exploring this issue. Sometimes we have great
ideas and think we are helping children, but there can be hidden side-effects. If
one child has an active reading family and meets all the class goals, that child
and the family benefit. If a child has no one to read to them, is living in a hotel
or trailer on the back of their property, has no electricity for light at night,
and has no books in the house, that family can't support the outside of school
reading goals so that child loses out again on a reward. OR even worse, the child
gets the award but the family cannot afford to drive to Pizza Hut, cannot afford to
make any additional purchases, and the child cannot fully appreciate the reward. If
a teacher is pushing for the class to all win the prizes, but the child cannot
claim the prize, that is not rewarding. If we could enable the children to earn
prize!
s witho
ut penalizing the families, that would be better than the current situation.
But I am with the group that says reading is a wonderful activity and provides
intrinsic rewards. I'm not going to stand in the way of prize-awarding, but I am
going to start demanding the people who run the programs find ways to make sure the
programs are not punitive to the participants.
Thanks for letting me rant, but I just had bus duty and sent some children home to
non-optimal conditions. I believe that my instilling in them the love of reading
and how reading can save their lives, change their lives, and provide the enjoyment
for their lives, they will be much better off.
--
Diane R. Chen, Library Information Specialist
Hickman Elementary School
112 Stewart's Ferry Pike
Nashville, TN 37214
TEL: 615 884-4026
Personal Email: dianerchen@comcast.net
Work Email: diane.chen@mnps.org
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