Wednesday, April 15, 2009

contracts, rewards & pendulum swinging

i just returned from the principal's office (fyi, it's no fun as an adult either).

Z's teacher, Z's principal, B & I had a sit down. here's what we left with:

the principal has a contract out on Z, wait a minute, that wasn't right...the principal has a contract with Z (there, that's better).

beings his latest problems have occurred out on the playground during recesses, that's our focus now. at the end of each recess, he will get a sticker from his teacher if he manages to keep his hands, feet & objects (what?) to himself. so in addition to the regular classroom happy face/unhappy face, stickers for playground behavior. the principal has decided to really give the boy incentive, once he gets x amount of stickers for being good at recesses, she will give him a game.

at home, he will get some sort of little candy treat like m&m's or something for each sticker. we B decided we would go ahead & get the DS (that didn't happen at Christmas) to use gaming time as a reward for happy faces. the DS & the game will be ours, Z will only get time for good behavior.

& finally, his teacher said the past 2 days he's been fantastic in class, working hard & getting along with classmates. she told us they played a round of dodgeball where he was 1 of the 2 last players left & when the ball came at him he lunged over it. he still was hit (& cried) but everyone cheered him on & yelled about how cool his jump was.

3 comments:

  1. well that doesn't sound nearly as bad as what you (& i by assoc) had worried it would be. no blaming, no accusing...just ideas.

    it's a terrible thing that when we have taken things away from our kids as punishment we then have to buy them better things so we can plan to take them away. i'm so with you sister!! :-)

    report cards came out today. 3 of 6grades are up. 1 is mediocre. and 2are in the gutter. i guess that is a good thing. lol it's better than it was. but we are now on the home stretch. only one more grading period left. i hope "we" can make it!

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  2. I just exhaled. This is great news! It really sounds like the principal is trying to work with you instead of pointing fingers. I think we moms feel guilty enough for every little thing. Gage flipped his card to orange yesterday (that's two flips - green to yellow, yellow to orange) and we had MAJOR discussions last night. I asked him what he thought his punishment should be and he said no Wii this weekend (he loves that Wii more than he loves me and Chris combined - God's honest truth). Chris didn't like that since I'm out of town this weekend so he'd have nothing to distract him with. But Gage had a great day today and said he thought he probably earned back the Wii for Friday. I told him he needed to talk to Dad about it since I would be gone. I was pretty impressed that he thought about earning back this privilege. What's your point, Kate? I don't know. I'm tired. Never mind. Good news, though, Steph.

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  3. yes, new principal is much better than asshat principal, helpful even (what a concept!).

    M - haha, i know i can't wait for summer, school & homework are tough & i need a break! Good news that there was SOME improvement though in the grades, right?

    SIL - sorry to say but i completely see Chris's side (only because i know how things are at my house when i'm not around!).

    One of the punishments we've used is to have him sit at the table, facing the wall & do nothing. it's not great, but he's not falling asleep or playing in his room.

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