Is the 5-Star system Fair?

Every Friday, students line up during lunch to attend the 5-star store and use their points to obtain certain items, but there are still students that don’t interact much with these points. What is the reason some teachers aren't choosing to participate with the app?

Student store at lunch with a large line waiting

The 5-star point system is meant to acknowledge students for doing the right thing, and as a result they are given points as a reward so that they can use them to treat themselves. Points aren’t distributed by all teachers, which lessens the 5-point system towards students, and this creates an uneven balance between them as some students may have higher points than others. While this may come off as unfair, it's not necessarily the teacher’s fault as it's a long process to give out points during classes.

 Points can be earned through participation and involvement around the school, so students aren’t withheld from obtaining points. The 5-star system doesn’t encourage every student to use their points because sometimes the students don’t care for the amount of points they have or they don’t want to wait in line for the entirety of lunch. 

Many teachers and other staff members expressed their views on the 5-star system to help discover the reason why it may be such a hassle to deal with. Assistant principal, Ms. Chamberlain shared her opinion on why students obtain little points in an interview, 

“The biggest issue we have with 5-star is that not all the teachers use it and you know we can't make people use five star but we encourage teachers to give their students five-star points.”

Ms. Chamberlain holding a box of noodles available at the store

It seems the majority of teachers find that giving points out is a hassle. English teacher Ms. Grefe was interviewed for her thoughts on points through the app and students.

 “I can recognize the things students are doing well, but it's tedious for me to go into the app, log into the app and then I have to sit there and type in every single student's name like by hand and then because of the way that the app structured every time I give that student a point, I then have to go out and then retype a different student's name and it's like there's nothing that would make it engaging and easy for me to like do on the spot.” 

Despite some difficulties that occur within 5-star, principal Mr. Halt believes it has made a positive influence on the students and their behavior. He was interviewed and explained, 

Student store with one person in front of it

“Every Friday, you see a good line out there, we hope that kids keep giving us feedback about the things that they value and the rewards they appreciate, whether it's our monthly bigger events like pizza day or churro day or whatever it is, we wanna make sure that we're being responsive to our high performing, good kids.” 

The 5-star point system is a positive reward system for students and that giving out points can be a lengthy process but is worth it to motivate good students to work hard.