Alfie Kohn and the Elementary School Classroom

Hello fellow Loonies (our school is Loon Lake so we call ourselves Loonies)! As we complete our first year with our new junior kindergarten program, I wanted to share some ideas and theories from a scholar named Alfie Kohn that I feel relate to our elementary school learners. My hope is that some of his ideas and theories may help you in your own classroom and with your own students. I believe we need to take a hard look at what we are doing in the classroom and make sure we are doing everything we can to help our students become the most successful learners they can be. Kohn was born in 1957 in Miami Beach, Florida and attended Brown University for his bachelors degree and The University of Chicago for his masters. He is an American author and also does lectures on topics such as education, parenting, and human behavior. I like reading about Alfie Kohn because he challenges education theories and practices and is not afraid to say something. Much of what he believes/questions in schools aligns with my own beliefs and practices in those areas, especially when teaching young fives in junior kindergarten. He challenges the ideas of standardized testing, homework, incentive programs, and the way schools dole out discipline. Many of us have talked for years about changing the way we do things to get kids to be more on board with their own learning. As a building we have talked about the pros and cons of homework, different ways to motivate or discipline students, and especially in our building we have talked about the use of incentive programs (sticker charts, games as rewards for behaving as they should, etc.).

Kohn has published 14 books and 8 of those were on the subject of education. In some of those books, and many of his articles, he talks about those issues I listed above which is why I wanted to share some of my learning with you. He believes children should be involved, curious, and actively learning versus being talked at or being made to memorize and regurgitate. We have talked so much about the pros and cons of skill and drill in our staff meetings so hopefully this will resonate with some of you. He believes that classrooms nowadays are focused on getting kids to be compliant with the use of rewards and talks about why those rewards can, and will, fail. In his article “The Risks of Rewards” he talks about what we as teachers know to be true - “punishments and threats are counterproductive and while they elicit temporary compliance, they do not help children to become ethical, compassionate decision makers.” We also know that the use of rewards can come back to bite us when we try to take those rewards away (the sticker chart or the velcro dots working toward a special game time with another teacher) the motivation to continue said behavior is gone. Children start to wonder, as we have seen in our building, why they would do it if they are not getting anything out of it in terms of a reward. 

Alfie Kohn is believes that “if the classroom is run with cooperation in mind, and if the students’ curiosity is being nurtured, then students will act appropriately and neither rewards nor punishments will be necessary. Overall, curiosity and cooperation should govern the classroom.” I absolutely love, and agree with, these statements and beliefs. I have proof from teaching junior kindergarten this year and being allowed to run the program as I saw fit with hands-on learning and play-based learning, that when children are given time to explore and learn at their own pace and in their own way, the rewards and punishments are no longer needed. I did not talk at my students, I observed them and talked with them to find out what they were interested in and went from there. Kohn says that “curiosity should govern what is taught inside the classroom” and I could not agree more. So many of my students came in talking about dinosaurs so of course we did some work learning all about dinosaurs. In return, I did not need to use consequences or rewards, they just had a blast “learning” by playing all things dinosaurs. They were not even aware that they were learning and the amount of behaviors that disappeared in my classroom from kindergarten (very structured and teacher led with little time to explore) to junior kindergarten (hands-on, play-based learning) was astonishing! We have to be very careful about the use of extrinsic motivators both at school and at home - our motivation for learning needs to come from within to be most impactful. 

Kohn “does not support the idea of strict standards to ensure that all students are learning the same thing at the same time because not all students learn at the same pace.” This is something we as educators have known for years. Going along with what he said above about curiosity governing what is being taught, I wonder how we could build some of this into our K-5 classrooms. It was easy for me as I was developing my own curriculum and it happened to go along with everything I have shared about his beliefs. However, in the reality of an elementary school building, I know there are standards and expectations but I also really feel we need to get some curiosity happening in classrooms so we stand a chance at getting our student’s interest in school back and maybe a love of learning to return to the classroom - lofty goals I know but I think if we put our heads together maybe we can come up with something like Fun Fridays where the kids get to choose what they learn about that day. It is up to us as educators to fight for our students and their learning and make school fun again. There are too many kids with anxiety and other mental health issues and I cannot help but wonder how that might all change if we take some of the school pressures, competition, and even standardized testing away. Kohn says, “a more successful classroom will have students learning about their personal interests”, wouldn’t that be amazing if we could just throw out mandated curriculum and let students choose? 

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