I struggled with my behavior intervention plan in my last year of teaching. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle the behaviors in the classroom. I was able to manage behaviors, but my struggle was with the token economy part of the behavior management system.

This was my dilemma. I was suspended for 3 days that school year. I normally teach 190 days a school year, that year I taught 187. I know 3 days may not sound like a lot. But, when your spouse is also an educator and is furloughed, that’s a total of 6 days of earnings, with no earnings.

The total amount of leave days was approximately $250.00/day which was not in my household budget. Having said that, my struggle was: “Do I want to ‘PAY’ students to behave in my class?” Do I want to buy candy, ice cream, pizza, etc. in exchange for his “good” behavior to be able to teach?

I think behavior should be intrinsic. A student must want to behave in class in order to learn. Learning is her job. My job was to teach.

However, I agree that it is also my responsibility to make my lessons fun and engaging. It is the student’s responsibility to want to learn in order to be better citizens of society. I also understand that this is not the case.

Behavior intervention plans are created to encourage a student to behave appropriately at school. These plans are used to intervene/change a student’s misbehavior. A team of teachers, the parent, and the student usually create the plan. There are rules for the student; consequences if the rules are broken and consequences if the rules are followed, like a token economy.

A token economy is sometimes used in behavior intervention plans. The token economy is used to try to alter student misconduct actions. For example, if the student does not yell in class for a certain period of time, the student receives a reward.

The reward is usually a sticker, special privilege, or food ie candy, chips, ice cream, etc. The token economy system often requires the teacher to purchase items in exchange for appropriate behavior in class. Items purchased from the teachers’ family budget.

I didn’t want to “BUY” my student’s good behavior. Again I say, the student must WANT to behave in order to learn. And in my experience, this management system was short-lived and made it difficult to manage my classroom.

These behavior modification plans do not provide the student with self-efficacy or a sense of achievement. According to “The Psycho-Educational Teacher: Helping Students With Recurrent Behavior Problems”, the student believes that “I can do ____, so I can get ___”, as controlling their behavior externally and not controlling behavior internally. This causes the intrinsic motivation to behave to be devalued.

Students must have a say in what motivates them. Children must follow the rules of good behavior when making appropriate behavioral decisions.

Good behavior should be its own reward. The student’s feeling of belonging to a classroom to learn and feeling appreciated is the self-efficacy that the student must bring to the table. This behavior management technique will last for more than one day.