Stars
Mariana is obsessed with stars. Her first grade teacher has a star system for kids’ behavior. When a kid is doing something good, and the teacher notices, she might give the kid a star. And when kids fill up their star chart they get some sort of prize. So Mariana tries as hard as she can to get as many stars as possible every day.
The thing is, Mariana is already a really good kid, so she doesn’t really need any extra motivation. But nevertheless, she really loves getting stars. She told me that the record for stars in one day was 5. So she said she wanted to get 6 stars. And a couple days later she got 6! Then she said she wanted to get even more than that. So a week later she got 9!
That all sounds great, but I’ve been in the classroom when the teacher gives out stars. She gives them out for the stupidest things. You can get a star for almost anything. You can get one for just getting out a pencil when you’re supposed to. You can get one for having your hands folded on your desk. You can get one for just sitting there like an idiot and not making any noise. Now, I sort of understand giving out stars for stupid things, because there’s some stupid bad kids in the class, and the teacher wants to give the positive reinforcement. For example, there’s this kid in class, and he’s known for biting other kids. I call him “the kid who bites.” And of course, the kid who bites has to sit byhimself off in the corner, because the teacher is afraid he’ll bite people. But the teacher tries to make him feel good about himself, so if he hasn’t bit or kicked anyone in a while she says, “Oh, look everyone, ___________ is sitting nicely in his desk. And he hasn’t even bit anyone today. ________ gets a star!”
But if I was Mariana I’d be like, “WTF?! All he does is not bite someone for 5 minutes and he gets a damn star? I’ve haven’t bitten anyone in class ever! I should have like 1000 stars by now!”
And she’s right. Because by that standard Mariana should be getting a star literally every second she is in class because she is literally always on task, always attentive, and pretty much always gets everything right.
Plus giving the biting kid a star never helps anyway, cuz by the time the next recess comes around someone inevitably says, “Teacher! ____________ bit me!” And the teacher says, “___________, did you bite someone? I’m going to have to take that star away!”
So the star system doesn’t work for biting kids. Anyway, everyone knows the only way to get dogs to stop biting people is to bite them back, because dogs only learn through pain. So that’s probably the only way this kid will learn. Next time he bites someone, instead of taking a star away the teacher should walk right over to him and bite him. That’s how you show dominance. But I’m not the teacher, so I dont’ have the authority to do that.
