One of the most mortifying days in my life occurred over 15 years ago, soon after I had arrived at Miss Yang’s second grade class at Anza Elementary School.  That moment is as clear in my mind today as it was when I was replayed it in my mind over and over during the walk back home that fateful day.

Like many teachers of her day, Miss Yang had a bulletin board of small envelopes labeled with all of her students’ names—these envelopes were filled with green, yellow, and red pieces of construction paper indicating good, medium, and bad behavior, respectively.  Everyone started each day at green, and when one exhibited bad behavior, one would be requested to “pull a card” and reveal the underlying Scarlet Letter.  There were those kids who had no qualms about being red-carded on a daily basis; however, I was one of the good’uns who took pride in being all green, all the time.

Until one day.

A poster that Miss Yang had recently put up fell to the ground as she was pointing to it, and simply put, I laughed.  Not because I was a second-grade-jerk, no—because laughing at falling things was a tradition I had brought with me from Lincoln Elementary School, where Mrs. Sorenson would lead the whole class in a good laugh and song anytime something fell in the classroom.  But Miss Yang, unaware of the source of my laughter, was offended—she simply said, “Genie, how rude! Pull a card!”

I wanted to die.  I wanted to transfer schools again.  I was no longer Little Miss Perfect—I had been demoted to a Yellow.

I bring up this story now because I’m attempting this system of shaming-students-into-being-good in one of my worst classes.  This group of 11- and 12-year-olds is heinous; they smoke, they swear, they fight, and worst of all, they run free like the boys in Lord of the Flies—none of the teachers call them out on their behavior or discipline them in any way, shape, or form.

That is, until now.

While I’m not authorized to punish or discipline them, I can reward my good kids who have been deprived of a quality education and sociable classroom environment—if, at the end of the class one maintains a green card, one receives a stamp which, when accumulated, leads to stickers and baseball cards (quite the hot commodity).  While I can’t hope for a complete turnaround in attitude from the bad’uns, I am hopeful for a little bit more peace…results to come…