Teacher ‘Charges’ Students ‘Desk Rent’ To Teach Financial Literacy, Sparking Debate

"Students earn Brain Bucks every day for attending class, but also for things like participation and showing responsibility throughout the month. Then, on the last Friday of the month, they write him a check for 15 Brain Bucks to rent their desks — unless they’ve chosen to save up and pay the 75 Brain Bucks to “own” it outright."
"“Whatever they have left over, they can spend it on the treasure chest, or purchase a more expensive prize from the treasure trove,” Vuong said in a video explaining his system. They also have to add 3 Brain Bucks for tax on anything they buy."
"But Vuong is a teacher and reiterated in a later video that this is a teaching method, not something designed to add complications for struggling students. If students don’t have enough rent, there’s no punishment or shaming, and Vuong talks through the why of it with them, to see whether it was a budgeting issue or if there’s something out of their control going on that prevented them from accumulating enough Brain Bucks. They’re also given the opportunity to earn more.
“At the end of the day, this is still a token economy system for positive reinforcement,” he said. “I never punish a kid by taking away their Brain Bucks, because they earned it.”"