AIBU to think ClassDojo and the rest do more harm than good?

[MostlyKeepingMyHeadDown]

My own kids are grown now, but I've spent years teaching and then training teachers, and I've watched these apps spread through primary schools without anyone really questioning them. AIBU to think they deserve a lot more scrutiny than they get?

Main things that keep coming up:

• The quiet, well-behaved kid sits on the same few points for weeks while a classmate having a rough patch gets showered with extras for "improving" — zero isn't neutral next to someone else's double figures.
• Some kids work out that being naughty one day and good the next wins more points than just being consistently fine.
• Points get docked for things like fidgeting or being distracted once — minor stuff that still follows a child round publicly for the rest of the week.
• It's visible to the whole class, sometimes to parents too, so one bad day becomes a bad day everyone can see.
• Kids with ADHD or autism can end up with negatives for things that are really about the disability — lost homework, poor organisation — not wilful misbehaviour.

We toured a primary school which basically had a naughty and nice class ranking list on the wall with a sad face next to some of the childrens' names. We couldn't get out of there fast enough! I don't think a whole class should be able to see the progress of their classmates.

My son is disabled and goes to a special school
We just have the App its great for messaging .

I think it’s like most online tools, it’s about how they are used by people rather than that they exist at all.

It shouldn’t take much effort for a teacher to ensure they are being fair and consistent with whatever method of merit points they have have to use, but unfortunately many of them don’t because of all the other pressures on them.

I'm a teacher and loathe this app more than I can say. It adds to my workload through the expectation that I am now responsible for curating the online presence of my class in a way that delights and engages all parents yet raises no questions nor prompts negative engagement. It's so stressful and causes me to constantly second guess myself, my practice and the online content I'm compelled to create. It's takes approximately 15 minutes of my day, which doesn't sound like much, but my list of "Oh, it's just 15 minutes, we owe it to the children" list is long and probably amounts to 3-4 hours over the course of a week, and that's on top of marking, lesson planning, resource creation and running extracurricular activities. I already work a good few hours from home after my DC have gone to bed most nights and a day on the weekend, so time is precious. There is a weird humiliation in having to post insanely cheery snaps and messages from the day in class while I am feeling terrible about the amount of time my career steals from my own DC.

And don't get me started on how accessible it makes me through the direct messaging function, and therefore professionally vulnerable -engaging with parents while officially 'off' work, and off site.

It's a scurge, and definitely was not created with teacher wellbeing in mind.

You can group children into houses and allocate house points which takes the focus off the individual and children love getting house points

Yanbu. The SEN children seem to get the most praise at my childrens school. I get they want to give them a boost but what about the ordinary children who need a confidence boost too.
It also means as a parent it’s another thing to keep on top of, especially when an important notification is sent out last minute and half the class see it and half the class don’t. What happened to screwed up letters at the bottom of the school bag once a week. Not to mention I have another dc with a different app!

Even before things went online, my youngest would come home upset as the boy who was always sat next to her would get rewarded points for just behaving well, something she did all the time but she didn't get any points. She felt it was so unfair. I understand what they were trying to do, but it often left those who were flying under the radar with no recognition for their good behaviour

ooh so glad we don't have this. I sound very old school, and possibly disinterested (I'm not) but I don't want to know the minutiae. I expect my son's school to communicate if there are concerns, and he is quick to tell me if he's been praised or done something well or gained an award etc.

That's good enough for me!

This is common?

How would you help to teach the children who are not behaving appropriately to improve their behaviour?

It needs to be public or in all honesty they ignore it. You need to flag "happy face" behaviour so its clear what good looks like. You need to flag "sad face" behaviour to train them not to repeat it.

Unfortunately there's a trend atm of parents expecting school to fit around their child, rather than the other way round. Unfortunately life & society are not like this, and children need to be socialised at school to become the adults we want and need.

DS’ school uses it but I generally think they do it quite well. A lot of them are awarded (or taken away) for class behaviour but they seem to reward the right things. They always seem to have different winners, rewarding both effort and people who do things well without much effort. I think the teachers have always been quite thoughtful about how they use them, recognising that ‘good’ behaviour doesn’t look the same for everyone.

edited to add: parents can’t access the scores of everyone and are kept at arms length from it all.

Absolutely.

This was my experience at school and also my DD's currently. Well behaved, bright or middling, good natured children get no recognition at all.

I can’t comment on the subject matter because I am absolutely fascinated by how you have managed to speak ai.

I don’t actually think it is ai. But you are sounding ai. Honestly you need to get off ChatGPT!

Thankfully not a thing at my son's school, they are all about enforcing good behaviour in a positive way so they might have names on the board for children who have behaved very well but they wouldn't do it for negative behaviour.

I completely agree with this. I still remember when I was at school a girl called Jenny got house points (which were written in a planner in those days) for doing her homework once in a blue moon, while the rest of us who did our homework every week got nothing.
It infuriated me then and does now that the same is still happening with my 2 kids.

I don't think it's the app that causes the problem, it's the people who are using them.

Punishments and rewards are kinda the same thing, presented differently. If I say to my little girl that if she's good this week she'll get an ice cream on Friday, that sounds like a reward. If I say, "If you're naughty this week you won't get an ice cream on Friday," that's a punishment. They're the same thing really though.

So with Class Dojo, I know that some schools don't use the negatives but if every child in the class is on +10 or more and you're on 0, it doesn't matter whether it's a negative number or not. It doesn't matter whether they understand maths. They know they're losing, so it's negative.

There's another problem with Dojo points or similar. When children know they get points for good behaviour, you get loads of the behaviour that you're looking for and none of the stuff you're not looking for. When we say to a dog, "Good dog," we don't mean "good dog." We mean "compliant dog" and I think we want more than compliance from children and young people. I think we want them to be good, don't we?

Every parents evening and in every report, DC is praised for being a really good kid, inciteful, kind, well behaved … the phrase “a joy to teach” used several times…. Do they get points??? Do they hell. The points go to the disruptive brats (who shove, shout, and kick on a daily basis) on the rare occasions when they get through a day without causing a first-aid slip to be issued to one of their classmates. We’ve explained to DC that the points are basically a bribe for kids who need it, and because DC doesn’t need it, that’s why they rarely get one. Luckily DC has accepted this logic, despite its inherent madness, and DH and I don’t bother logging in to the app. I also told the head teacher why we not looking at it when we spoke and he’s fine with that.

It seems a bit like user “error” though.
We do not take points away.
After a week, a week and a half there’s no reason for any child to be on 0. Points are given for various reasons , but mostly effort is recognised.

Sometimes it can be a tad pavlovian , but I don’t see that as a downside. For example let’s say it’s a morning settling in activity. Some kids come in straight away, sit down, get on with it. Some faff a bit , but eventually get there. Some are stragglers, still faffing, having a chat, walking around to get a water bottle, pencil, sharpener etc. Rather than saying Suzie sit down, Jimmy get back to your sit, Jenny stop talking, Martin write the date etc. I just award a couple of Dojo point to the kids sitting down and quietly getting on with it. The board is normally frozen, so they just hear the DING! . Their heads pop up, and at least one or two start doing the right thing, a couple more dings and then in less than a minute everyone is at least sat down and not distracting everyone else. The well behaved kids get plenty of chances to be recognised . The tricky kids, or the ones that struggle get plenty of chances as well.

Could I do without it? Of course , as there are other methods of praise and recognition, but I do find it handy.

I just think it seems like such a waste of teacher time and energy in primary school. In secondary school, I do appreciate the app we use (it’s not class dojo) because there a lot of different teachers and I appreciate the feedback and communication. But my youngest one’s poor teacher is up at 11pm adding dojo points! I just think her time would be so much better spent going to bed and being well rested. I don’t look at or care about the points and nor does my ds (and he’s very good and gets plenty of them).

Oh, I know but I think most children respond to the first example better than the second because it is more positive.

I don't like dojo but I do think schools have to have some kind of way to manage behaviour when it can be up to 30 children in a class and often with limited to no TA's now.

Same here.
It's a great way to communicate with school when you have a non verbal child.

Sorry - obviously I meant "insightful". DC is not inciting anyone to anything!

Something happens to adults - they forget children have feelings and memories, get embarrassed etc. and treat them like they don't have rights. It's sad.

We have the app. Have used it for several years now and DS2’s school doesn’t use points nor have they ever been mentioned to us. Think we’ve had it for 3-4 years now.

We only get updates from teachers, reminders, about parents evenings, certain non-uniform days and pictures from certain activities.

Points on the app have never been discussed.

The school does have houses and house points but that is done at school, not with the app. It’s a mainstream school with a pretty good senco.

I agree. I'm aghast that someone up thread thinks being the "bottom child" of 24 on a wall chart with a sad face and a black cloud is somehow motivational. Takes all sorts I suppose.