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| Children's pay envelope |
To help the children understand the roles and responsibilities within a group and community, Water group came up with jobs for group time. The children will be paid after each group time with stickers for doing their jobs and when a child is not following a message, he/she gets a ticket. When someone receives a ticket he/she has to use the stickers earned to pay for the ticket. The children are very excited with this idea and they came up a list of jobs and their description. As we carried out our group time, Becky noticed that more jobs need to be added, for example, a No Touching Monitor (a person who can remind others to keep their hands to themselves).
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteI wonder how this sense of jobs and tickets came to be. Did the children think there should be some kind of reprimand for showing a lack of community spirit. Does this feel like punishment to them or are they processing it in different ways? SOmetimes as adults we come to these things with a lens that is much different than the children.
I'd like to get the children connected to the idea volunteerism and how this is part of the unpaid community and without volunteers in Vancouver we'd be less effective at caring for one another. I wonder what they'd think of that?
I also wonder what they think of all of this in terms of our practice of being principled. I explain this to children as doing things they know is right even when others won't notice, give them credit or acknowledge the good work. It's a concept that we can explore and maybe even make a felt board story of and see how the children discuss the topic. I wonder if there are any parents in your group who have a book that illustrates principled behaviour well (or maybe even the lack thereof.
Thanks for exploring these topics with the children and going with a respectful and reflective flow so that they can deepen their understanding of what it means to be in community.
Thank you Kate for your comment.
DeleteHere's how is how the jobs and tickets came to be.
The Water Group began with the discussion of the different roles in our school. As we were generating our ideas, some children noticed that one or two others were not participating. This started our conversation into our roles during group times. The children came up with the following ideas: help clean up, pay attention to each other, take turns, and listen to each other. After we finished brainstorming the ideas Jack reminded the children that everyone has to be principled. As group time progressed, we noticed again that some children need reminders of their jobs. Then Serena suggested that maybe we should have a manager to make sure that everyone is being responsible. This is how we came up with the different monitors. The next day, we assigned each job to a child and carried on with our group time. Judy noticed that some children weren't listening to the monitors. Again, the children had to put on their thinking caps to find a solution for people to listen to the monitors’ messages. To help guide the children, I asked them what we do in the community for others to follow the rules. For example, when we want drivers to slow down in a school zone. Serena said, "If someone speeds near a school, then the police can give that driver a ticket and the driver has to pay it." Then the children decided to try the ticket idea. But how are we going to pay for the ticket? Since most people get paid doing their jobs in the community, the children felt they should get paid too. Since I am the “supervisor” for Water Group, I offered to pay them 3 stickers for doing their jobs after each group time. This way they can pay for their tickets.
The children are constantly observing how their ideas are working and offering new ones. Just the other day, we had another idea that we might try next week – community service. Rather than paying for the ticket, they can do something for Creative Minds or on the school grounds.