Healthy Competition In and Out of The Classroom

As I type this, I periodically stop to "think". Normally, when I "think", I stare out the window at the blah of winter and all of its dread at this point in the year. But, not today! Today, when I "think", I am standing up and walking in place. I'm not the only one doing this today. Within a one hour radius of my school, several teachers are pacing while watching their favorite shows, walking in place while cooking dinner, or are walking up and down stairs three times before they actually grab that one thing they need.

You must be thinking "these people are crazy".  Well, most people do when they see us walking in place and talking in the halls at school. But, really we aren't... I swear!!! The real story is, my principals and I have launched a walking challenge with the staff. We didn't make this challenge up on our own. Like all good teachers, we stole borrowed the idea from another building. The basic idea is everyone pays a small sum to participate, teams are formed, and your team's weekly steps get recorded. We are walking across America starting in California at The Golden Gate Bridge and ending in New York at the Empire State Building. We are walking actual miles! To help us, we get bonus challenges that will give us extra steps as a team. In the beginning, I thought if I got 15,000 steps a day I would be happy. Once I saw the 25,000 steps per day people were getting, I knew I had to step my game up... LITERALLY!!! People are taking this seriously!

Some benefits I have already seen in our first short 3 weeks of the challenge are that people who teach different grade levels are talking and getting to know each other better. It is really uniting our school and removing the silos we tend to see in a building. Teams are making shirts and funny names up like "Holy Walkamolies". We group text each other  for encouragement. Some even give challenges within their own team. One team has invited everyone to work out after school one day each week together. Even teachers who didn't participate are cheering us on in the hallways and encouraging us by asking how many steps we have gotten in that day. The biggest benefit is it is bringing our staff together in a positive way.

Another thing happening this month is the Olympics. Our school is using this memorable event to promote competition among students as well. (But more on an individual basis, not student to student competition.) Our kids are being encouraged to read a certain amount of minutes to earn a Bronze, Silver, or Gold metal. Additionally, our primary students are doing a coloring competition, and our intermediate students are doing a writing competition making up a backstory for the official Olympic mascot. Each class is learning about an Olympic sport and researching it for a whole school Olympic board. You can just feel the energy in the building!

So all of this competition got me thinking. (Dangerous right?) How could we use this healthy competition among PLC's and classrooms in a building with a focus on academics? Could we challenge other classrooms on a specific area that we see all kids need to improve on like math fact fluency or reading fluency? Could we use a measure we already use to track student growth and include students in setting a classroom goal with a prize in the end for the winning class? I am envisioning this as an independent competition also where students set their own personal goal in specific areas and then they are rewarded with a privilege when they meet their goal.

Although I am not one to love extrinsic motivators, this race at school has really shown me how people love to get a reward for something they do. I wonder how serious people would be taking the race if they hadn't paid some money up front and there was no prize in the end? I think our students would be more motivated if they had something to work for in addition to growing as a learner. They will see that they have grown as a learner and be proud of that, but will also have the satisfaction of being able to have a pajama day or free choice technology time for winning a learning competition.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this topic! Please comment below or send me an email. :)