Punished by Rewards? A Conversation with Alfie Kohn

The principal from my Intermediate School shared an article with her Monday bulletin as a suggested reading for the staff. I have been thinking about the problems that have risen from time to time in my classroom when learners that come from an extrinsically motivated classroom to my room in which there is not behavior manipulation. Punished by Rewards.pdf I totally agree with Alfie about intrinsic motivation and have thought for a while that there is a direct relationship between the level of learner engagement and classroom management. I particularly enjoyed…

“However, [giving rewards] doesn’t give us license to treat kids like pets when the task is uninteresting. Instead, we need to examine the task itself, the content of the curriculum, to see how it can be made more engaging.” Pg. 2

Learners who don’t find their experiences in the classroom life worthy do one of two things. Some will passively and politely comply with classroom rules, while others (like me) will rebel and challenge. Are the experiences we are providing life worthy? I often ask myself while designing music experiences, why is this important? Are the learners engaging in authentic processes of a musician in ways that are problem solving experiences? Is the assessment designed to honor multiple ways of showing understanding?

“Skillful teaching involves facilitating the process by which kids come to grapple with complex ideas—and those ideas, as John Dewey has told us, have to emerge organically from the real-life interests and concerns of the kids.” Pg. 3
Can’t pass up a good quote from Dewey. The passage right after this quote explains it well. It’s not the drill and kill skill set that learners are fired up about, it’s how they can apply those skills contextually into their personal interests. Life worthy.
Alfie talks about content, community and choice being factors for successful learner experiences. This resonates with me and brings Ron Ritchhart’s 8 cultural forces to mind. Expectations, opportunities, time, modeling, language, environment, interactions, and routines. These forces are always present in our classrooms, it’s how we marshal these forces that make a learner’s experience meaningful. Life worthy.
Probably my favorite passage…

“Has the child been given something to do worth learning?” If you ask me what to do about a kid being “off task”—one of our favorite buzzwords—my first response is going to be, “What’s the task?” If you’re giving them garbage to do, yes, you may have to bribe them to do it.” Pg. 6

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