Reward - The Sindhupalchowk Diary

The Sindhupalchowk Diary

reward

rɪˈwɔːd/

noun

1. 1.

   a thing given in recognition of service, effort, or achievement.

   "the holiday was a reward for 40 years' service with the company"

   synonyms:

   recompense, prize, prize money, winnings, purse, award, honour,

Don’t you love getting rewards? Everyone does. So do I.

But, when was the last time you got rewarded. You might be thinking, “What should I be rewarded for? I haven’t achieved anything BIG.”

Yes, that’s right. You might not have achieved anything big. But you must have done something that doesn’t look big to others but means a lot to you.

Let’s do a time travel. Travel to the time you felt glad because you did something you couldn’t do. Travel to your school days when you couldn’t add two digit numbers but learnt it finally. Travel to you KG days when you couldn’t write letter A properly but finally started writing it.

What if you would be rewarded for all those little things that you achieved? You might not have been the topper of the class but you had definitely improved. Shouldn’t you be rewarded? Wouldn’t you feel accomplished had you been given just a pencil for writing the letter A?

That’s what led me to applying Reward System in my classes.

1.      Reward could be anything. Reward could be a pencil, a copy, an eraser or in case of lack of resources, it could be a simple chit saying “You are awesome”. Reward could be a hi-five.

2.      Reward those who not achieved high, but those who improved much compared to their own performance last time.

3.      Reward little improvements.

4.      Reward exceptional deeds, those kinds of deeds that none dared to do.

5.      Don’t overlook the high achieving students while looking for the little improvements in low achieving ones.

Bishal Ghale from Grade 6 is a very low achieving student. He failed last year and is repeating this year. None has expectations from him. Everyone feels he is lazy. I rewarded him for his good handwriting though he hadn’t written much in the exam. He was the rewarded the following time as well. This time, it wasn’t for his handwriting. It was for doing well in the exam itself.

Min Bdr. Tamang from Grade 7 is a low achieving student. He got reward. He didn’t get the highest of all. But what he did was worth rewarding. Out of the 24 students, he was the only one to solve two questions of Unit Conversion.

Susmita Shrestha is a high achieving student. She got rewarded, not for getting the highest of all, but for getting higher than the last time.

Rupa, Dolma and Ganga are low achieving students. They all got awarded for improving. It was great to see that they hadn’t been expecting to be awarded and couldn’t believe it.

*I still continue rewarding my kids.*

Find the other series here.