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We have all heard stories about administrators rewarding students’ bad behavior. Although we send students to the office for disciplinary reasons, they come back to the classroom with candy or small toys that are incredibly distracting to the entire learning environment.
Students reappear and shout, “Look what I got,” as other kids watch with enviously wide eyes, secretly planning what they can do wrong so they can go to the office too. This is similar to a parent undermining the discipline of the other parent. Some of us may wonder if this is really happening in our schools.
Yes, it is, and it is actually worse than you think.
Real examples of rewarding bad behavior
Educators from all over shared with us outrageous stories in which students who should have been given serious consequences, instead came back gloating about their rewards. Here are a few.
Mike T. commented that he had one principal take the students out for McDonald’s when teachers sent them to the office.
Kim G. said her student came back from the principal’s office saying, “That was fun.”
Lauren O. shared that the office staff let a student watch SpongeBob on an iPad after the student threw a chair across her classroom.
Nadia O. shared the story of a kid who threw strawberries at her daughter, knowing she was allergic. The very next week he was Student of the Week, and her daughter had to write a note congratulating him on a job well done.
Stuart R. was a first-year teacher when a student returned from a suspension with a brand new pair of sneakers. He told the teacher his mom bought them so he wouldn’t feel bad about his suspension.
Why is this practice so harmful?
The students that are most heavily rewarded are students that are misbehaving, so the well-behaved students are thinking, “What is going on here? I am following all of the rules and get nothing. Meanwhile, this kid who regularly knocks over desks and hits other kids is sipping on a juice and eating gummy worms.”
Fairness is completely thrown out the window, and everyone is left feeling like, “Something just ain’t right here.”
Why are we rewarding bad behavior?
We all know that this can’t be helpful, so why is this happening? Please make it make sense that we would reward a student for causing major disruptions in the classroom.
We can only conclude that administrators think teachers aren’t giving their students enough positive reinforcement, so they take it upon themselves to do so. Undermining at its finest!
This is absolutely not true, and it completely destroys the administrator/teacher relationship and affects the climate negatively.
The majority of time, teachers are sending students to the office after exhausting their positive behavior strategies and any other consequences they are allowed to enforce. It is simply not working. They need to restore order for the benefit of everyone in the classroom, including said student. Administration needs to apply appropriate discipline, not hand out prizes to placate bad behavior.
What can we do instead?
Administrators should be building positive relationships with students. They should be talking to students at lunch time, before school, and passing periods. This is the time that they can give students positive reinforcement, not when teachers send them to the office for disciplinary reasons.
Schools need to delegate resources to fund more counselors, one-on-one aides, and behavioral interventionists. According to Chalkboard Review, the number one reason teachers are leaving is because of student behavior. Society and administrators seem to think that if we can’t solve all our students’ problems, we are failures at our jobs. Behavior management cannot be left squarely on the shoulders of teachers. We are not that strong.
