With teacher burnout at an all-time high, school administrators are searching for more meaningful and sustainable ways to recognize and reward their educators. While teacher appreciation weeks, thank-you cards, and small treats are nice gestures, they often fade into the background. What if there were a way to make teacher appreciation an ongoing, dynamic part of school culture?
Bales Intermediate is just one of several ClassBank schools that has adopted an innovative solution: using ClassBank not just for students, but for teachers as well. Continue on to learn how they implemented a staff incentive system using ClassBank and the impact it’s had on teacher morale, collaboration, and school culture.
We thought—why not use this platform to celebrate our teachers the same way we celebrate our students? -Ryan Kopp, Principal of Bales Intermediate
"As an administrative team, we have tried several ways to show our appreciation for our staff over the years, such as Thankful Thursdays, appreciation posters, and compliment cards that could be filled out," Ryan explained. "They all seemed like great ideas at first, but over time, they lost their excitement and ultimately just didn’t have the impact we wanted."
Then, something changed.
"When we decided that we were going to roll out ClassBank as a student incentive system, we were amazed with how easy it was to use. One day in our admin/instructional coach meeting, the idea was brought up about creating a staff incentive system utilizing ClassBank. We thought—why not use this platform to celebrate our teachers the same way we celebrate our students?"
The first step was brainstorming what teachers could "purchase" with their ClassBank money.
"We started brainstorming ideas for rewards first. We talked through some small monetary items staff could purchase with their ClassBank money like Sonic drinks, flair pens, and even Starbucks," he shared. "We then shifted our attention to the question that really solidified this idea as something we wanted to try: What could we give them money for?
The overwhelming list of ideas surprised us originally.
Our teachers and paraprofessionals do such amazing things on a daily basis and we seldom honor this work. This system would provide an opportunity for them to be recognized and rewarded for their hard work."
Once they had the rewards in place, they pitched the idea to their leadership team of eight teacher leaders.
"As you can image they loved it and thought it would be a great addition to our systems on campus. We utilized their feedback to adjust the incentives, bonuses, and values. Since rolling it out to begin this year, we have seen real excitement from many staff members as the store opens each progress report and they’re able to shop."
"We want to reinforce positive contributions to our school community—whether that’s through collaboration, innovation, or just the extra effort our teachers put in every day. Some of the key things we reward include:
Teachers then use their ClassBank earnings to purchase rewards from the staff store, which refreshes periodically."
"We probably haven’t seen the full impact yet," Ryan shared. "I do think that the staff members who are at full implementation in their classrooms with ClassBank have enjoyed having this system and are utilizing it more than those who are not. I also believe that there are many teachers who are now curious about ClassBank who may otherwise take more time to get on board. It’s hard to know the impact because we had so many strong teachers advocating for ClassBank that we are off to a great start. The hope is that our end of the year culture survey will show an increase in the questions which connect to feeling appreciated and enjoying the work environment."
"I would tell them not to hesitate to begin a staff system. It was extremely easy to get started, it’s not that difficult to manage, and the teachers really have enjoyed it. We need to continue to improve in remembering to give ClassBank money out as we sometimes get into the flow of things and forget. We know that we can still improve the systems, but we are much further along than we were before."
"One of our third grade classes thought that I needed to pay their teacher so that she had money to give them. Each time I entered the room, they were telling me how great their teacher was, hoping that I would give her more money to disperse. We did let them know that wasn’t how it worked, but it was pretty funny."
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