February 8th

After the success of last week, I was excited to implement the behavior contracts again, so Monday, February 8th, I brought out the behavior contracts for the students again.

What a difference a week can make! It was night and day! The students with the behavior contracts talked the much! The LEAST that any of them talked out was 3 times, with some of the boys talking out all the way up to five or six times!

It was a really discouraging day, because it showed that last week's success was not something revolutionary, but a quick band-aid fix. I think that the excitement of having the behavior chart was enough to get them under control for a few days, but with no added incentive (dollars, stickers etc.) they quickly lost interest and no longer tried to control their mouths during the lesson. Funny thing is that it didn't stop them from making happy faces, they just realized that they could make as many faces as they wanted, and it apparently didn't matter if they earned them or not.

I decided that even though my original hope was to find a way of inspiring good behavior without adding an incentive, I definately needed to add something to make those behavior contracts work again, and the best alternative that I came up with was a competition for class dollars. I decided that would be my next step.