Forced Niceness' and Other Paradoxes in the Classroom
Jackie Bacher, like most teachers, begins each school year with a conversation
with her students about expectations for the coming year. Unlike most
teachers, she hands each of her 5th graders a checkbook kit and announces
they’ll each have jobs this year and will get paid class money. The
students are thrilled to be earning money and using a checkbook. They
feel “grown-up.”
Ms. Bacher goes on to outline her class management system, which is a
sophisticated combination of “real world” money management and
her unique brand of ethics. Students feel even more “grown-up”
when they find out they have to pay rent (on their desk and locker) and
taxes:
“We have to pay taxes? How much?”
“Ten percent of your weekly wages. You’ll get paid $25 a week
for your job, but if you don’t do your job, you could get fired.”
“Fired? What happens if you’re fired?”
“Then you get $5 a week instead of $25.”
“Like … unemployment?”
“Exactly. But you still have to pay rent and taxes. You can ask
for jobs, too.”
“What if we can’t pay rent?”
“You get evicted.”
“Evicted? Does that mean we stay home from school?” one student
asked hopefully.
“No. It means you don’t have a desk or locker until you pay
your rent, and then your possessions get put in a trash bag.”
Jackie’s students have more responsibility than the average 5th
grader, but they also have more say in how their classroom runs. And when
Jackie’s not there, the class still runs smoothly.
I know because I subbed for her once. I thought I’d gotten lost
in a TV classroom on a Hallmark After-School Special. It’s not that
her 5th graders were “Stepford” children. They were independent,
opinionated, and lively. It’s that they were so helpful and polite
that I felt like a guest, not the proverbial “sub.”
I left a good report and then asked her about it later.
“I call it ‘forced niceness,’ ” Jackie said with
a grin. “If I get a good report from a sub, they get a tax-free bonus
(up to $500). If I get a bad report, they get fined.”
She also uses a system of bonuses to reinforce good behavior, to get
papers and permission slips back, and to communicate students’ progress
to parents (students get a bonus when parents or guardians sign tests
and papers or when they return permission slips on time). Alternately,
she also fines students for late homework, being sent to the office, or
talking out of turn.
Parents generally love her system, and one single parent even instituted
a version at home with her girls’ allowance, reporting good results.
I’ve never heard Ms. Bacher raise her voice to her students, ‘nag,’
lecture, or get ruffled. But her students know that they will be rewarded
for acts of kindness or will experience quiet, swift justice for acts
of meanness.
One past student found out firsthand. He wondered aloud to another boy
whether a girl from a “particular” neighborhood knew anything
about sex. Curiosity is one thing, but then he really crossed the line.
The boy asked his classmate whether she was a virgin.
The girl replied, “Doesn’t that have something to do with Christmas?”
and had no idea why Ms. Bacher fined the boy $1,000 for his inappropriate
question. But the boy knew why.
The best review, however, came from a brilliant, “quirky” student.
In the past, other students had shunned him. He was too “weird”
and too smart and his sense of humor seemed odd to them. In short, his
classmates misunderstood him. Jackie encouraged her class to see his gifts
and value them. By mid-year, classmates were lining up to be his partner
on projects. He told his mother,
“Mom, this is going to be a good year. The kids in my class are
nerds like me.”
“What do you mean by ‘nerd?’” asked Jackie when he
relayed the story to her.
“Kids who are nice to each other.”
The hardest thing to do is to set the standard for yourself …
because if you wait and just sort of react to things on the spur of the
moment, you don’t have a rationale to give back to students. And
one of my fundamental beliefs about teaching is that nothing you do as
a teacher should be without a reason. … Any time you are in a position
of power over anybody else, it’s very easy to become arbitrary, so
you have to decide where the line is for yourself. And on the other side
of that, the more freedom you can give students, the better. ... It’s
a decision you have to consciously make; it’s not just going to make
itself.
— A wise middle school teacher
Posted February 22, 2000