Shaming Students One Wall at a Time
Feb 18, 2015 7:13:16 GMT -5
Post by mrsbuttinski on Feb 18, 2015 7:13:16 GMT -5
Kathleen Jasper February 16, 2015 63 Comments
The losers in school know who they are at a young age – usually by kindergarten or first grade. And losers are easy to pick out, because their reading progress, or lack there of, is usually displayed on a bulletin board somewhere in the school for everyone to see.
I’ve had numerous opportunities to visit schools, and too often I see cringe-worthy data walls being used to “motivate” students.
One such day, an enthusiastic teacher was walking me around her school, excited to show me the students’ progress and growth. We stepped into a dark, first grade classroom, and she flipped on the lights. Eight round tables were positioned in the room and on the tables were baskets with neatly arranged bottles of glue, color pencils, sticky notes and other supplies. Around the tables were miniature chairs. I love seeing those tiny chairs; they just make me smile.
My smile faded as I looked to my left and saw a huge bulletin board that said, Ribbit Reading Progress. On this bulletin board were 15 or so frogs with five segments. Some frogs were colored in a mosaic pattern– the head was green, the right arm was purple, left arm was green, right leg was purple, left leg was orange. I saw two or three frogs where the entire body, head and legs were green. Two frogs were completely orange. I knew right away, the orange frogs were the losers.
Even though I knew the answer, I asked, “What’s with the frogs?”
Proudly she said, “It shows their reading progress. When a student can read a passage fluently in a minute, they color part of the frog in. Then we post the frog on the board so the kids can see their progress. If they improve, they get to go to the treasure box in the front office on Friday.”
I took a breath and said, “Let me guess, the green frogs are the winners and the orange frogs are the losers”
“Well, I wouldn’t say losers,” she said defensively. “They just need more time and more remediation. And we use orange not red, because we feel red is a little too abrasive. We don’t want to break anyone’s spirit.”
I smirked and said, “Don’t you think the owners of the orange frogs feel like losers when they look at this wall?”
She gave me a sideways glance and said, “I suppose, but having this competition in the classroom is an incentive for students to do well on their reading. We have noticed substantial gains in reading scores since implementing Ribbit Reading Progress. And we don’t use their names, just their student numbers.”
Make no mistake, no one needs names to identify the losers. They all know.
I could see she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone and she was proud of this competition so I ended my questions. I was a guest in her school and didn’t want to insult her by saying, “Lady, your Ribbit Reading Progress is a problem and you should take down that wall immediately.”
I tell my students, who are future teachers in the college of education, this story in hopes they will never use this practice in their own classrooms. It never fails; every semester a few of my undergrads raise their hands to tell me their own shame story about being a loser, their failure displayed on an orange frog or red bear or short line on a giant bulletin board for the whole school to see.
It doesn’t take a PhD in early learning to know data walls and reading competitions are bad because they make winners and losers out of students. Yet, if you Google making reading a competition, you’ll find an infinite amount of products, technology and organizations dedicated to reading battles.
And losers are hot commodities. Losers make companies lots and lots of money.
Reading competitions have become a staple in American classrooms. I remember Book it!, a competition-based reading program in the 80’s where Pizza Hut gave out free pizza parties to the best readers. Since then there have been many competitive reading programs: 100 Book Club, Accelerator Reader, Just Read!, and Empower 3000.
These competitive programs cost districts millions of dollars and lots and lots of time. Districts buy these programs even though the research shows, time and time again, making reading a competition has negative affects on student learning:
A study conducted to examine the affects of Accelerated Reader (AR), a popular reading competition program, found AR programs with elementary school students do not result in a higher level of reading among those students when they reach middle school. (Pavonetti, Brimmer & Cipielewski, 2002).
Making reading a competition can have lasting negative effects on how a student sees him or herself as a reader. “The motivational outcomes of literacy tasks influence how students interpret their roles in learning to read. Those interpretations can affect their desire to persist and to remain involved in literacy” (Turner & Paris, 1995, p. 671).
Studies have shown that feelings of self-worth become dependent on external sources of evaluation as a result of competition. Children succeed in spite of competition, not because of it (Kohn, 2009).
Losing is actually really important in learning, because vulnerability and failure is where a lot of important discovery happens. However, students should have the opportunity to feel vulnerable and be a loser on their own terms and not have their failures displayed on a wall in the school.
The solution is simple; tear down the walls. Stop mandating shame in schools. Applaud winners and shame losers at sporting events. That kind of practice doesn’t belong in the learning environment.
conversationed.com/2015/02/16/shaming-students-one-wall-at-a-time/
The losers in school know who they are at a young age – usually by kindergarten or first grade. And losers are easy to pick out, because their reading progress, or lack there of, is usually displayed on a bulletin board somewhere in the school for everyone to see.
I’ve had numerous opportunities to visit schools, and too often I see cringe-worthy data walls being used to “motivate” students.
One such day, an enthusiastic teacher was walking me around her school, excited to show me the students’ progress and growth. We stepped into a dark, first grade classroom, and she flipped on the lights. Eight round tables were positioned in the room and on the tables were baskets with neatly arranged bottles of glue, color pencils, sticky notes and other supplies. Around the tables were miniature chairs. I love seeing those tiny chairs; they just make me smile.
My smile faded as I looked to my left and saw a huge bulletin board that said, Ribbit Reading Progress. On this bulletin board were 15 or so frogs with five segments. Some frogs were colored in a mosaic pattern– the head was green, the right arm was purple, left arm was green, right leg was purple, left leg was orange. I saw two or three frogs where the entire body, head and legs were green. Two frogs were completely orange. I knew right away, the orange frogs were the losers.
Even though I knew the answer, I asked, “What’s with the frogs?”
Proudly she said, “It shows their reading progress. When a student can read a passage fluently in a minute, they color part of the frog in. Then we post the frog on the board so the kids can see their progress. If they improve, they get to go to the treasure box in the front office on Friday.”
I took a breath and said, “Let me guess, the green frogs are the winners and the orange frogs are the losers”
“Well, I wouldn’t say losers,” she said defensively. “They just need more time and more remediation. And we use orange not red, because we feel red is a little too abrasive. We don’t want to break anyone’s spirit.”
I smirked and said, “Don’t you think the owners of the orange frogs feel like losers when they look at this wall?”
She gave me a sideways glance and said, “I suppose, but having this competition in the classroom is an incentive for students to do well on their reading. We have noticed substantial gains in reading scores since implementing Ribbit Reading Progress. And we don’t use their names, just their student numbers.”
Make no mistake, no one needs names to identify the losers. They all know.
I could see she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone and she was proud of this competition so I ended my questions. I was a guest in her school and didn’t want to insult her by saying, “Lady, your Ribbit Reading Progress is a problem and you should take down that wall immediately.”
I tell my students, who are future teachers in the college of education, this story in hopes they will never use this practice in their own classrooms. It never fails; every semester a few of my undergrads raise their hands to tell me their own shame story about being a loser, their failure displayed on an orange frog or red bear or short line on a giant bulletin board for the whole school to see.
It doesn’t take a PhD in early learning to know data walls and reading competitions are bad because they make winners and losers out of students. Yet, if you Google making reading a competition, you’ll find an infinite amount of products, technology and organizations dedicated to reading battles.
And losers are hot commodities. Losers make companies lots and lots of money.
Reading competitions have become a staple in American classrooms. I remember Book it!, a competition-based reading program in the 80’s where Pizza Hut gave out free pizza parties to the best readers. Since then there have been many competitive reading programs: 100 Book Club, Accelerator Reader, Just Read!, and Empower 3000.
These competitive programs cost districts millions of dollars and lots and lots of time. Districts buy these programs even though the research shows, time and time again, making reading a competition has negative affects on student learning:
A study conducted to examine the affects of Accelerated Reader (AR), a popular reading competition program, found AR programs with elementary school students do not result in a higher level of reading among those students when they reach middle school. (Pavonetti, Brimmer & Cipielewski, 2002).
Making reading a competition can have lasting negative effects on how a student sees him or herself as a reader. “The motivational outcomes of literacy tasks influence how students interpret their roles in learning to read. Those interpretations can affect their desire to persist and to remain involved in literacy” (Turner & Paris, 1995, p. 671).
Studies have shown that feelings of self-worth become dependent on external sources of evaluation as a result of competition. Children succeed in spite of competition, not because of it (Kohn, 2009).
Losing is actually really important in learning, because vulnerability and failure is where a lot of important discovery happens. However, students should have the opportunity to feel vulnerable and be a loser on their own terms and not have their failures displayed on a wall in the school.
The solution is simple; tear down the walls. Stop mandating shame in schools. Applaud winners and shame losers at sporting events. That kind of practice doesn’t belong in the learning environment.
conversationed.com/2015/02/16/shaming-students-one-wall-at-a-time/
