Jan 27 2009
They want the stickers
I often joke, when I am teaching, that someone deserves a sticker.
I don’t usually actually have stickers with me… although I do have many at home: I like stickers! Always have 
Anyway … today, while teaching, I told someone that if I had my stickers, I would definitely give him one, because I really liked the fact that he was helping some other students that were having some trouble with the queries we were working on.
Stickers?
Oh sure, I told them… I even have airplane stickers because I teach them (aviation students).
Cool! They want airplane stickers.
And they are going to get them, too.
Because the silliness about airplane stickers changed the dynamics of the entire room.
Before then, many of the people were tense & frustrated. People who had missed any classes up until then - many of whom did not have textbooks…which drives me nuts and makes ME frustrated (I can cope with a few people sharing texts - but if you’re not going to come to class religiously, you damn well had best buy a book - and not only that, DO THE WORK YOU MISS!!!! …don’t expect me to keep 30+ people who do come to class and are ready to move on waiting for you - and yes, all of this is CLEARLY stated in the syllabus).
Anyway - today was a review period, and I encourage people to work together to figure stuff out without ME having to tell them (it sticks better) ….but really, the room had largely divided into people who knew what they were doing working together in small groups, and people who were totally lost & floundering making no progress except when I could get to them. I was getting frustrated, especially with people sitting idle and not even TRYING to figure things out while they waited for me…. GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!
But after that one off the cuff comment about stickers everything changed.
They got it …. all of them.
The students who knew what to do, within minutes, it seemed, were scattered around the room helping the students who needed help. And - after one quick redirection: helping = no touching of the mouse - they aren’t allowed to just reach over and do it for them; have to teach them, using words - not only because the learner will be more likely to learn it, but ESPECIALLY because the best way to learn something well is to have to explain it to someone else.
Some people who I had been marked and left already somehow ended up back in the room …. they poked their heads in looking for someone, and ended up back in there… helping, laughing, teaching…. learning.
Just the way I like it.
Coolness. Don’t you love it when things just fall in place?
Nifty!
Note to self: acquire stickers for test-prep class.
Great! I nearly laughed out loud at the no touching the mouse instruction! My sister, then in her 50’s returned to school upgrade her skills. She actually slapped her young teacher’s hand because she tried to do something for her instead of telling her how!
it is a hard thing to do sometimes… most of us think better with our hands on the mouse… me included…. but I try really hard to not take over (except if I am troubleshooting rather than teaching) …and if I DO need to do something to figure it out or to show them, I make a point of then UNdoing and having them do it themselves.
Glad you found a good way to get them interacting. Hope the stickers don’t get expensive!
How neat when things come together like that and you have a totally productive class! My absolute favorite student of all was an 82 year old woman who had come to my class so she could learn to email her penpal in Finland - they’d been exchanging letters for 20 years and he’d just gone online and was encouraging her to do the same. She was so afraid of breaking the computer that I had to -bribe- her to touch the mouse or keyboard. And then one morning, I came in to find she’d arrived early and was creating a birthday card in MS Publisher - on her own. She’d asked my officemate to open the program that she’d seen me creating flyers in for her and then gone to town. Amazing the things that will motivate people, isn’t it?