classroom economics

one of my favorite words is "incentive."

it is true that everyone is rationally self-interested, so it is true that people respond to incentives.  the only problem is providing the correct (good) incentives.

if you think about it, putting me in charge of a classroom of kids has a lot of similarities to making me the dictator of a small country inhabited solely by people with an undeveloped cognizance.  i can do whatever i want.  all they can do is respond.

the beauty is, they don't always respond like they "should".  i can try to micromanage, but i can never fully understand or predict how they will respond.  it's a great example of how central planning can never be THE solution.  the classroom as a microcosm of economic systems — didn't see that one coming, eh?

though it's been frustrating at times, i always love observing unintended consequences (even at my expense).  and i love seeing them reason through the rules of the "game", and come to conclusions.  it's really important to realize that if my students aren't acting the way i want, i can only blame myself.  earlier this week we watched a movie in class, and i gave my first section a handout of questions to answer throughout the movie (to keep their attention).  sounds good, right?

nope.  it was a disaster.  some of them answered some of the questions, then they would distract everyone else by whispering across the room trying to find the answers they missed while they were doodling/zoning out.  no one took any additional notes.

i wanted to be mad at them.  but, how can i be mad when they were just doing what i set them up to do?

in my afternoon sections, i had a completely different approach.  i told them to take notes in two columns: old information, and new information.  obviously, if something we've covered in class is also in the movie, it's important.  then, i told them what to look for in the new information (we were learning about the development of democracy in Athens). also, i told them their next test (two days later) would include information from both columns.

both of my afternoon sections had a completely different experience.  they were at rapt attention for the entire hour, and i had several students in both sections take over THREE PAGES of notes.  afterward, they were all abuzz at how great the movie had been.  success.

the moral of the story?  well, one lesson is it might be good to mix up the schedule of classes between semesters so one section isn't the victim of failed experiments for the entire year...

and hey, stop accusing me of turning people into experiments.  i spent most of my lunch just hanging with 7th graders, i held a school-wide spelling bee after school, i went running with the "run club" after that, then i played basketball with more 7th graders after that.

all for absolutely no reason.  :-P