A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to attend a workshop where the 2012 National Teacher of the year Rebecca Mieliwocki was the keynote speaker. She said something that really stuck with me; she was talking about assigning class jobs, and she said, “After I’ve given out all the jobs, and all I have to do is teach I feel like I get paid the perfect amount.” Of course this was meant to be funny, but since then I’ve been wanting to make student jobs a part of my classroom.
I hear so many ideas that I want to implement, so I have to be strategic to avoid burnout—I can usually try 3-5 new things at the beginning of the year, and 3-5 new things in the middle of the year. When I say “new things” I’m talking about major classroom shifts, and implementing jobs (and making it work) was/is one of those things. Luckily, I already have a classroom reward system, so I knew what type of salary I was going to offer. Please see the blog from May 2014 Classroom Management.
I have been doing this for three weeks now, and already it has undergone changes. Also, I’m amazed at the amount of reinforcement that is needed, but I can see that it is starting to work.
Here is a picture of the job list that I showed to my classes on Day 1:
I hear so many ideas that I want to implement, so I have to be strategic to avoid burnout—I can usually try 3-5 new things at the beginning of the year, and 3-5 new things in the middle of the year. When I say “new things” I’m talking about major classroom shifts, and implementing jobs (and making it work) was/is one of those things. Luckily, I already have a classroom reward system, so I knew what type of salary I was going to offer. Please see the blog from May 2014 Classroom Management.
I have been doing this for three weeks now, and already it has undergone changes. Also, I’m amazed at the amount of reinforcement that is needed, but I can see that it is starting to work.
Here is a picture of the job list that I showed to my classes on Day 1:
 | At first, I thought I would have them apply for jobs, but then I realized it was easier just to find out who was interested in what job (not all students wanted one), and to assign it that way. If multiple students wanted the same job, sometimes I would just give two people the same job. I realized early on that I needed a way to quickly identify the students who were assigned jobs, but what would be a cool way to do this? Lanyards! Luckily, the students agreed. When they walk in the door part of their job is to grab the lanyard-- if there was a student who didn't want to wear it I would never require that, but they would need to keep it prominently displayed at their desk. Especially the tech. person because the class needs to know who to go to for computer problems. |
I soon realized that I also needed to keep track of students who were actually doing their jobs. I did tell them that the first week would be unpaid training. The second week I paid, but I deducted pay for negligence. For instance, the chair manager left 5-6 chairs down on a Friday, and the host hung up on somebody without getting a name so I could call them back. There have definitely been some glitches, but we are on the road to success! Next week, this is how I will keep track of who is doing the job on a daily basis (see below). Because of our block scheduling we have six days in a unit, and I pay on the last day. I keep this on my clip board, and if students do the job as I outlined it I give them a check mark, but if I have to remind them I'll tally how many times I have to do so, at the end of the week we'll have a discussion about how/if I should pay them. I'll upload this as a document below, so you can edit it as needed.
This is still a work in progress. Since we began I've realized that the "Flash drive collector" job is not helpful-- it's easier if everyone puts their own flash drive back. Also, I realized that the host (who answers the telephone and the door) needs a script and some practice, which we've done a couple of times:
I think this is going to be beneficial for my classroom because it creates a community, builds student confidence, and teaches job skills. I'm uploading some word documents that I've used please tweak them and make them your own. I might blog about this next month too, and I'd love to hear how you might have adapted this to fit your classroom!
| Job List for Teacher |
| Host Script |
| Job Name Tags for Lanyards |
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