Saturday, March 12, 2011

Great ideas for schools #8: Teacher trading cards

Pleasant Ridge Elementary in Overland Park, Kansas, has a clever system in place to reward positive behavior. The values the school emphasizes are displayed here:

A teacher who observes a student demonstrating any of these traits can randomly commend that student by awarding points, and when students accumulate a certain amount, they can trade them in for goodies (kept in a special room that is all decked out with stars, streamers, and the like):

I especially liked how every teacher in the school is depicted on his/her own trading card, which the kids are given copies of:


And the traders—the kids themselvesare also put on trading cards!

I don’t remember exactly how the cards relate to the points system, but no matter—teacher trading cards, while labor intensive for sure, is a wildly stimulating idea that other schools can adapt and make their own in any number of ways. They can help bring into focus the teacher coolness the kids are exposed to every school day but may take for granted.

No comments: