The Magic of Animal Stickers

In the first of my three careers I was a teacher, and for the last eight years of that I taught middle school in a rural community. My classes always had a fair number of farm boys who, to put it kindly, were not committed academics. Lovable, boisterous, sweaty, and rowdy, but never much concerned about math or the letters. Until, that is, I discovered animal stickers.

One day I got called down to the primary wing, probably to deal with a “blood on the floor” situation (not that I was skilled, it’s just that I seemed less fazed by a howling youngster bleeding all over the floor after a mixup with a pair of scissors). After the poor little kid had been calmed down and bandaged up and calm returned to Mrs. McIntosh’s class, I looked around and noted as if for the first time that the currency of the place was animal stickers. Robins and crows, frogs and bunnies, squirrels and goldfish. Sell my soul for a butterfly!

Now, animal stickers had been the currency of primary classes since log cabin days. But in a flash of crazy inspiration, I wondered how they’d impact my teenage lads. Why not find out?

Well, it’s like I introduced cocaine to them. Pretty soon all of them were doing all of their assignments all of the time, and the quality improved. Markedly. Sure, they were still slovenly and barely decipherable, but have you ever seen my handwriting? The point is that for a few dollars’ worth of animal stickers, these lads were selling their souls to me and getting into the mainstream of education.

The fad lasted maybe a month, month and a half, but by then several of the lads had discovered that they could produce work every bit as good as the brainiac eggheads of the class. After that, they never let up, and some went on into the professions.

Now, this true parable is told not as an insight into education, but as a parable of human nature and of motivation. The truth is that all of us tend to underperform, and we underperform because we’re undermotivated. Sometimes somebody outside of ourselves needs to give us whatever animal stickers work for us, sometimes we need to find our own animal stickers.

Bosses, supervisors, and leaders of all sorts understand the power of animal stickers. In one office, a grimy one-eyed teddy bear is the object of monthly rivalry among departments. Animal stickers of all descriptions work powerfully to motivate.

But the best animal stickers are the ones we give ourselves, rewards for reaching goals. This is the secret behind exercise apps. If you ask anyone who achieves great things, you’ll hear that not only do they make great demands of themselves, but they give themselves rewards — animal stickers of one sort or another.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got one or more projects in the “stuck” phase. Losing weight, learning German, finishing the book, earning the black belt….. Whatever.

So, what’s the animal sticker that would make you turn in quality homework?