The teacher implemented a "Froggie Miles" competition in her classroom to motivate students to complete assignments for non-grade rewards rather than just for grades. She divided students into teams and had them earn miles for their team based on completing assignments and activities. This increased student effort, engagement, and performance compared to just working for grades. Students took more academic risks and supported each other's learning because they saw it as helping their team rather than just themselves. The competition created a sense of community and excitement that engaged and challenged students more than the teacher grading assignments alone.

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Voices from the Middle, Volume 10 Number 4, May 2003
Roessing | Miles for Motivation
Miles for Motivation
Lesley Roessing
I
wearily climbed into my car. It had
been a long day. I could go straight
home. I went to the gym just yesterday.
• assignments that are personal or where the
student takes a risk, such as poetry;
• assignments that are creative, where I do not
want to delineate my expectations because,
by so doing, I may stifle responses that I
have not even imagined;
• assignments that could supplement and
enrich the curriculum.
And how about extra credit, fun work, learning
games—all kinds of assignments that I’ve wished
didn’t need a grade, where I knew that the grad-
ing system was actually contrary to the spirit of
the assignment. Realistically, however, I didn’t
know how to inspire the students to complete the
assignment without promising a grade—“pay-
ment” for work done. Most of my eighth graders
had not yet exhibited a love of learning for
learning’s sake. Maybe a team goal, such as my
gym’s Reindeer Games, would work.
I decided to begin with my Humanities class.
This was an eighth-grade language arts class study-
ing human rights and tolerance issues. I bought a
world map, had it mounted on foam board and
laminated, and drilled small holes through which
poked small colored Christmas lights. The lights
shone through the cities that were either settings
for our literature, home to our authors, or sites of
human rights struggles that I wished the students
to research. The trail started at our school and
stretchedaroundtheworld, stopping in such places
as Amsterdam and Germany (The Diary of Anne
Frank), South Africa (Waiting for the Rain), British
Columbia (I Heard the Owl Call My Name), Aus-
tralia (Aborigine rights)—all together, 32,000 miles.
After piquing interest with my lit map, I had
the students form teams of five members each—
I don’t have to work out. I deserve a break,
time to relax. Then I thought of my
“reindeer team” at the gym (it was De-
cember) and the miles I would earn for
the Jingle Bells Team when I logged
exercising time. If I went home, I would
be letting them down. My car turned
right, and I headed for my workout.
During the next days, I thought about how moti-
vated I had been to work out daily over the past
month. I had gone to the gym religiously, even
when I was tired or had other things to do—pa-
pers to grade, lesson plans to make, dinner to cook
. . . the usual. I could have found lots of excuses.
But still I went—and exercised. What was my
motivation? The gym had posted a map of the
world, and the trainers had formed teams from the
members. Each team would earn miles, depend-
ing on the weekly workout time of its individual
members. I had never even met my teammates and
had no idea what we might win, but still I found
myself going to the gym each day. I had never
thought of myself as competitive, but now that I
was part of a community, I did not want to let the
others down. One for all and all for one!
My personal experience caused me to consider
how I could transfer this motivational tool to the
classroom. I had often wondered how to inspire
students, other than by grades, and I had often
assigned projects that I didn’t feel should be
graded:
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Copyright © 2003 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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Voices from the Middle, Volume 10 Number 4, May 2003
Roessing | Miles for Motivation
“frog pods” I called them. One reason was based
on an amusing news story I shared with the class
about two young men who had “borrowed” an
older couple’s cement garden frog and took him
around Europe, sending home pictures and let-
ters before returning him to the couple and his
“lady frog.” Another reason was that frogs are
amphibious and can travel on both water and land
as my students would be doing. It seemed a good
fit. I found frog stickers, stuck them to paper disks
of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet, and attached
them to the map with moveable wall tacks. Soon
my room filled with frogs—from frog borders and
posters to frog Beanie Babies and gummy frogs.
Frog stamps indicated submitted assignments, and
frog stickers indicated satisfactory work.
After choosing team names, the first step was
to explain the procedure. Froggie Miles would be
earned by the teams for any assignments that were
not being graded in the traditional sense. Two
hundred Froggie Miles could also be earned each
day that all members of the group had their home-
work completed. For the first assignment, the
groups were to research and compute the mileage
between stops; the first team(s) with accurate re-
sponses earned miles. Creative assignments in-
cluded vocabulary ads, comma commercials, and
illustrations of scenes from A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Game days included Scrabble for Miles
and Grammar Jeopardy, both of which the Pods
took seriously, having fun while they played but
playing with a goal in mind. These were not “free
days,” a mindset that teachers usually have to battle
when introducing an academic game.
Personal poetry was awarded a number of
miles based on the implementation of literary de-
vices used, such as metaphors, personification,
rhyme scheme, and number of stanzas. Students
who submitted suitable writings for contests and
publications earned miles for their teams; this in-
spired one of our students to submit to, and win, a
county young authors’ contest. Lessons in toler-
ance were enhanced with voluntary (for miles)
research shared on violations in countries not al-
ready being studied in our literary works; students
within each Pod usually shared the burden of the
research. Since this class focused on human rights,
Froggie Miles could be earned for altruistic deeds
by group members. One young man spent an af-
ternoon in a nursing home, playing games with
the residents, while one young lady donated 10"
of her hair to Locks of Love.
This system functioned better than I could
ever have predicted. Students worked harder for
Froggie Miles than for grades. There was team
support of individual members in assignments and
team pressure to complete assignments. The Pods
even looked out for each other, occasionally award-
ing miles to the group who needed them most. In
each “contest,” there did not always need to be a
winner and four losers; differing numbers of points
could be awarded to groups, and sometimes the
same number was earned by multiple Pods. No
one even asked what the prize was to be (free pizza
in my room during lunch). In the end, other Pods
gave up lunchtime with friends and paid for their
own pizza so they could join us.
The Hoppin’ Frog Contest spread to my other
language arts class, and during a six-week unit on
Katherine Paterson’s Lyddie, the students divided
into six Frog Pods and hopped over a U.S. map
Our Froggie mascot shows off the board that served as
“Project Central.”
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Voices from the Middle, Volume 10 Number 4, May 2003
Roessing | Miles for Motivation
from Poultney, Vermont, to Lowell, Massachu-
setts, to Oberlin College in Ohio, just as Lyddie
and her brother did. I found that, in this class also,
motivation and productivity increased and grades
improved. The students had fun even though they
were doing more than the usual work expected
for the unit. And Ned, notorious for missing
homework assignments, was supported to the ex-
tent that another Pod member started recording
the assignments in his planner so that he would
remember them and the group could earn its daily
mileage. Students who had never volunteered in
class now stepped forward. Extra details were
added to writings, and illustrations were added to
vocabulary work. Competition, and grades, soared
as general motivation increased.
Why did the students perform for miles and
not for grades? It may seem contradictory that stu-
dents worked harder for miles, but they also took
more academic risks that could have cost them
mileage. Students are sometimes afraid to attempt
assignments or feel that a grade is not worth the
effort. Some have even said, “I don’t need the
grade. I already have an A or a B”; “I don’t care
about grades”; or “I just want to pass.” But I think
that the success of this contest was due to the sense
of community and the excitement of competition.
Sometimes students feel isolated when it
comes to assignments. Working together, even if
not on the same assignment, relieves them of that
solitude. I also believe that grades are seen as more
threatening and more critical of a student’s prod-
uct. If a poem earns a “C,” the student feels that
he is not a good writer, that the teacher doesn’t
like him, or that he cannot do the work. They let
the grade define them as students. Earning fewer
miles was seen as just that—the student or Pod
did not complete the necessary work to earn a cer-
tain number of miles; their product did not win the
miles. It appeared to be taken less personally, and
students took more risks because they could only
lose miles. When I analyzed this phenomena, I
thought of the analogy of grades as wages and miles
as athletic points. Students usually do not think
that they are given the grades they really deserve,
just as many adults do not feel they are paid the
wages they merit; however, when making a basket
in a game, the player never thinks, “That basket
was worth more than two points” and the half-
back doesn’t say to himself, “I worked hard. That
should have been a nine-point touchdown!”
Another motivational bonus was the positive
public acknowledgment. No teacher would ever
post student grades; even the A students—in
eighth grade, especially the A students—would be
embarrassed. But each period the students would
go to the map to see how they, or the other classes
involved, were doing. Motivated by curiosity or
pride, they celebrated the progress, even if they
had moved from fifth place to fourth.
As their teacher, I felt that the contest less-
ened my reliance on grades as a threat (“If you
want to earn an A or pass and go to high school or
get accepted to a good college or not serve fries
for the rest of your life . . ., you need to do this
work”). I became more creative with assignments
since I was not obliged to grade them. I wondered
what components I could add to increase the
Froggie Miles students could earn on this task or
to allow them to divide the assignment among
group members to take advantage of individual
strengths or talents? I thought about extra assign-
ments that would enrich the curriculum. Since
these were not mandatory or grade-dependent,
students and parents did not complain about lack
of time or an overload of “homework,” yet I knew
that, if some of the team members had extra time
that week, they would complete the work for the
Miles, and the class would benefit.
For these reasons, there were very few assign-
ments not completed during the Hoppin’ Frog
contests, and the students profited from the en-
richment activities, cooperative learning, and cre-
ative license afforded them. Students were not
working for the grade or for me; finally, they were
working for themselves, logging their own exer-
cising time for the good of the team and, ulti-
mately, for their own good.
Lesley Roessing is an eighth-grade language arts and humanities teacher at Ridley Middle School
in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. She can be reached at Lesley_roessing@ridleysd.k12.pa.us.
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