I talk a lot about classroom jobs in this newsletter, and for good reason - they’re awesome for classroom management!

You get students to take care of tasks that you used to take care of like:

• writing the agenda on the board
• organizing the supply closet
• making posters for the classroom
• ...and 24 other ideas here​

It does wonders for classroom culture as well.

But if you ONLY have classroom jobs, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

You should consider PAYING students in classroom money for their job.

Because if they’re making classroom money:

• they can now work in order to buy things in a CLASS STORE
• they can learn that they have to pay RENT on their desk
• and they learn that misbehavior results in a FINE

What is a classroom economy?

It’s a classroom management system where students earn and spend classroom money.

Ways to earn classroom money

• class jobs - harder jobs have higher salaries
• bonus money - ways they can earn extra cash each month (participating in extracurriculars, coming in for office hours, etc)

Ways to spend classroom money

• fines for misbehavior
• items in a class store or auction
• rent on their desk (unless they want to save up to buy their desk)

How does it help with classroom management?

A classroom economy has a classroom management system built right into it.

The implementation of the classroom jobs allows students to take ownership over many of the classroom tasks.

Giving clear guidelines and training students to do their job correctly leads to a classroom that gets maintained by the collective efforts of all the students.

This helps build a positive classroom culture where everyone is contributing.

Additionally, students also have to pay fines with their classroom money for misbehavior.

This sets the expectation of what is acceptable in the classroom with a clear consequence for not adhering to the expectations.

These were the fines (and bonuses) in my class:

How is the money managed?

I tried actually printing out GIBSON BUCKS to use as our classroom money for several years but it was a huge headache.

I discovered several apps out there that allow you to create a virtual bank with your students.

I wrote a blog post comparing some of the different apps that I used over the years, but most of them have these basic features:

• automatically deposit a students salary every month
• automatically withdraw their rent every month
• a way to for students to pay fines for misbehavior
• a way for students to see their own balance and transaction history
• a way for the teacher to see every student’s balance and transaction history

Talk about learning 21st century skills like online banking!

I think the best classroom economy app out there right now is ClassEquity.

One nice feature they have is a place where you can write down a student’s job responsibilities. That can serve as a checklist for those students every time they do their job.

And the interface is user friendly and intuitive so you can easily deposit or withdraw money for students in class kind of similar to Class Dojo if you ever used that.

How are jobs assigned?

I think the best way to ensure students actually DO their job is to give them a bunch of agency in picking the job they want.

I always presented kids with the list of 26 classroom jobs and then gave them a Google Form where they could pick their top 3 choices.

Then I went in and did my best to give all the students one of their top 3 jobs.

If many students applied for the same job, I sometimes assigned that job to more than one student, allowing them to alternate responsibilities.

I also sometimes really needed a particular job filled that no one applied for.

In those cases, I reached out to students and said something like:

This teaches them valuable lessons in negotiation and understanding leverage 😃.

But how do you make sure they DO their job?

I had a job of ‘teachers assistant’ who had a checklist of who had to do their jobs each week and when.

They gave gentle reminders to students as some students had to do their jobs at the start of class every day (writing the agenda on the board) while other students had a job that they only did at the end of the week (cleaning up the supply closet).

The checklist ensured they all got done.

There was also a ‘job infraction’ fine if a student didn’t do their job.

Where do the items in the class store come from?

I often got a bunch of items from the $1 section at Target. Pencils, small gadgets, toys, notebooks, etc.

But you can also have items in there that don’t cost you anything:

• a pass to sit in the teacher’s chair for a day
• opportunity to eat lunch in the classroom
• brain break choice
• no shoes in class
• tell a joke to the class
• pie teacher in the face (probably want to make this one expensive)

I also did auctions once a month and had a class job of ‘auctioneer.’ They had to go to different businesses, let them know about our classroom economy, and ask if they would be willing to donate any items to our monthly auction.

I gave them a letter template they could customize to look more official.

Auctioneers would get gift cards, big robot toys, book sets…one girl even got a lululemon water bottle (it’s an expensive yoga brand if you aren’t familiar).

Then once a month, the auctioneer would auction off 3-5 items to the highest bidder.

This seems like a lot of work…

It definitely takes time and energy to set up on the front end.

But the beauty of it is that it becomes a self-running system.

The more you strategically create jobs where STUDENTS are doing all the heavy lifting, the more student-led it will be.

It was always the most memorable thing about my classroom that I had students come back years later and talk about.

What would be a good first step to getting started?

If you haven’t already, check out my free list of 26 classroom jobs.​

When you click on that link, I’ll automatically email you some resources over a few days that’ll give you:

• details about the job application process
• the actual checklists I gave to all students to help them complete their jobs
• answers to some frequently asked questions

Try running those classroom jobs (without introducing the idea of paying students in classroom money yet) for maybe a semester.

How do I get started with the full classroom economy?

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of moving pieces when it comes to planning and implementing a full classroom economy.

That’s why I created the ‘21st Century Classroom Culture’ course.

It’s a self-paced, online video course that guides you through creating this digital, automated classroom economy.

I’ve designed this course to make it as easy as possible for you to actually implement this in your classroom.

That’s why I include all my customizable templates, which you can adapt to your classroom’s unique needs.

If you really want to do this, save yourself years of experimenting and troubleshooting by taking this course.

THOM GIBSON Educator | Creator ​thomgibson.com​ ​​

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113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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