Those Clips

A few weeks ago, this article made a brief round on my FB feed. The article talks about the classroom behavior strategy of the clip chart, where each student has a clip with their name on it, and they move up or down based on (how their teacher perceives) their behavior that day. The author of the article is not a fan; she argues that it causes undue stress for children.

When I first saw the article, I thought, "huh," and moved on. The next time I saw it, my friend had copied a quote from the article, comparing how we as adults would feel if such a system were used in our workplaces. The author claims it would "raise our anxiety" and cause us to become less able to stay on task, as we worried about what our boss and coworkers thought of us.

At this point I moved past the headline and dug in to what the author was saying. She criticizes the clip system based on what she calls "the Dangers of Clip Charts," stating that the public aspect of this feedback causes more harm than good. She goes on to support her claims with evidence from a book written by a child psychologist named Dr. Mona Delahooke.

My kids' school uses this system, and it's been fine, but that is simply anecdotal evidence of two young white girls. I responded to my friend expressing some concern that the article was making an unsupportable comparison between how adults respond and how children respond; in my limited experience, the clip system barely registers on the kids' radars.

And then the social media whorl started. Other parents chimed in with their own anecdotes about how the clip system affected their children.

"It also created divisiveness and a hierarchy amongst the children...as they used it as fuel against each other."

"My son started calling himself stupid and saying he never gets anything right!"

"It’s definitely causing some self esteem issues in our house, too. I understand why teachers need a toll and I want feedback, but I’m surprised by how fast my kindergartner has internalized and agonized over it."

I realized that, once again, I had approached the topic from the place of such privilege. My children are white, of the supposedly more-manageable gender, apparently middle class. They don't have any learning differences. My older child is a natural born leader with a head on her shoulders of such decency and grace that I sometimes wonder if she were switched out at birth with my real baby.

The clip system has one notable advantage, which is that, each day, each clip is returned to the neutral spot. Ostensibly, each child should start each day afresh, with a new chance to rise up in the ranking.

But we know, don't we, that yesterday and all the days before still exist in the teacher's mind. They are looking out for behaviors that the child may have exhibited before, and will be more sensitive toward the "good" or "bad" that that child does.

In addition, every teacher - every one of us, indeed - carries with us implicit biases. In the classroom, these biases usually are aimed at students of color, to their proven detriment.

So if the clip system has one iffy advantage, it also has serious flaws. It does not serve to strengthen either the personal relationship between the teacher and the student, nor to strengthen the day's instruction in any way.

I still hold that we should almost never compare adult behavior to that of children; it's not at all helpful in evaluating the mental or emotional state of either. But I admit that I was wrong about so easily allowing a system to exist in our school, and I'll be talking to the teacher about it as well as to the principal about training for implicit bias in our teachers.