So.... I walk
up to my neighbor's door- "Knock. Knock." And this semi-cranky old
man comes to the door demanding to know "What are you selling now?"
As I open my bag I pull out the order form and several brochures or pamphlets
of some kind that have pictures on them and hand them over,
"Cookies!" I say, "Cookies!" By this time, his cranky frown
that I'm sure was used as the model for Jeff Dunham's puppet Walter turns into
a happy smile like he just saw the Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich sun.
"Well then, I guess I'll take 3 boxes of each. How about that?" I
begin to do everything short of giving him a hug (hugging strangers is not ok)
because knows that I am 100 boxes away from winning the grand prize in my
troop. I wanted that cookie badge.
Badges....Badges…..oh
wait!
Badges in
education are somewhat different than badges for selling Girl Scout Cookies
(btw, I sold 465 boxes that yearJ). I think badges could make having
prerequisites and graduation requirements not be as boring as they sound. If
you have badges for certain skills then you also can incorporate the art
department of the school to create the badges your school will use and the
students can contribute to the look of the badges and how they’re displayed. In
addition to a good grade, having the badge to show that a student completed
something could be a big deal to some students who aren’t high achievers in
every subject. I relate badges to the
academic letter that I got in high school after having three semesters of at
least a 3.5 gpa, but I didn’t have a letterman’s jacket so right now I have no
idea where my letter is. At the same
time, Badges could possibly motivate students who don’t normally participate in
a lot of activities to get more involved with school whether its sports or
volunteer things. Badges could be used for those types of things too! I think
there are a lot of things that badges could be used for but at the same time- I
don’t think I know enough about them to want to incorporate them into my
classroom but they’re definitely a good idea and worth future investigation on
my part and on the part of school administrators.
