How I revolutionized the second grade with stickers.

Now that I am coming to the end of my time teaching in Spain (sniffsniff) I felt it was time for me to share some of my secrets to success—or at least survival.

Ok, in actuality my job is a piece of cake. Short hours, cute students, not much work. However, I do have one class (there’s always one) that may be slightly possessed. I won’t go into every detail, but let’s just say the two times a week I meet with them are the longest forty minutes of my life. It’s not just the normal types of misbehavior—talking, being out of seats, ignoring the teacher (although all of that is certainly part of the problem)—no, these children are also dangerous. They run with scissors, literally, and seem to be constantly maiming one another or themselves. I once witnessed one little boy convince another little girl to use a pencil sharpened on her skin…the scene got bloody fast.

My first few months here I merely tried to survive each session. I lost my voice many times but for all my yelling of the material they never once repeated the words I asked them to or paid me the least bit of attention. By Christmas break I had given up and sort of just stopped talking half way through class…no one, not even their teacher, noticed that I was just sort of standing by the board trying not to get hit by flying objects.

Well, I came back rejuvenated from my break and I decided I’d had enough. I wanted to at least pretend I could make a difference in their lives with my English lessons and I was blatantly tired of their horrible comportment. I don’t know how their teacher hasn’t had a mental breakdown! The problem is that there isn’t really any discipline in my school. This particular teacher threatens them with discipline constantly…she has an ongoing list of names on the board and she pronounces that they will lose recreo (recess)…but she never carries out these threats, so they are useless. It’s not my place to punish as I am just an assistant, but on returning to school in January I hatched a plan. I didn’t feel a great deal of hope in it, but I was willing to try anything.

Friends, my plan was stickers.

And oh how they have changed my life.

I went in on my first day of “the plan” and explained the rules, in English and in Spanish. Most of the class wasn’t listening, of course, but I explained anyway. Here were the “rules” to win a sticker at the end of a lesson:

1. Students must remain in silence.
2. If a student wants to speak, they should raise their hand.
3. Students must remain seated.
4. If a student wants to get up, they must raise their hand and ask.
5. When hands are raised, the student should wait to be called on (I had to add this one when it became apparent that they would raise their hands and then start speaking…)

I repeated the rules a few times and then continued with class. It was a madhouse. Save one student who has always behaved (in fact, I feel badly for him trying to learn in such a zoo), nobody followed a single rule. I knew that they hadn’t even heard the rules! But you know what? It was better that way. At the end of the class, I pulled out my sticker book and suddenly all curious eyes were on me. I really hadn’t expected mere stickers to hold so much power, but oh how they did. Everyone watched as I awarded my one student a sticker of his choice. I made sure to give it great pomp and circumstance so they would all notice.

Afterwards, I closed the sticker book and said goodbye as my lesson was over. They were all in an uproar! Why did he get a sticker? Where was theirs? Give me a sticker! Now that I had their attention I repeated what I had said at the beginning of class and explained that only one student had followed my rules. They were astonished.

The next day I started by explaining the rules again, still with little attention paid. But this day there were a few more students. Once again at the end the other students couldn’t grasp why they weren’t being rewarded with stickers. I called them out for all the ways they’d broken the rules and then left.

On the exercise went, although I varied my patterns. I never promised stickers, I only set out the expectations I had for their behavior. Once I had most of the class participating because they had finally caught on that I seriously wouldn’t give a sticker without good behavior, I became even a bit stricter. I had been a bit lenient about slips, but now I enforced a strict 3 strikes policy. If they broke any of the rules, that was one strike. The truth is that I always have the same two or three students who don’t care enough about stickers to behave, and yet they are always indignant at the end when they aren’t given one. Oh well, three students talking and out of their seats is so much more manageable than twenty!

Now that they are used to the stickers, I don’t bring them everyday. Sure, they get upset with me when at the end of class after they have worked so hard to follow the rules they aren’t rewarded as they think they should be—but I always explain to them that they should be paying attention and behaving well with or without stickers. Now when they ask me at the beginning of a class if I’ve brought stickers, I refuse to tell them but reiterate that it shouldn’t matter if I have them or not, they should behave. They don’t love this, but what choice do they have but to behave if there could potentially be a sticker in it for them?

Things can still be a bit out of control (and dangerous) in that classroom, but for the most part I now have much more of a handle on the situation. I have no illusions that they are really learning English, but at least for forty minutes twice a week I can get them to listen and repeat “mountain” a few times. I have greater peace of mind in the classroom—not to mention the use of my voice—and they occasionally get stickers. So I’m going to call it a win/win.

Lesson learned? Never underestimate the power of stickers and, well, blatant bribery when it comes to assistant teaching.