One of the problems involved in getting people to do what is needed for a child is in overcoming the strong need for fairness most people seem to have. If we are hamstrung by being fair and giving equal treatment to all, we will not fulfill the needs of many individuals. Many children require special handling because they have special needs. Whether it is fair or not has nothing to do with it.

Late one school year, a teacher came to me asking for help with one of her students. Polly (not her real name because this is a true story) was a little third-grade girl who had a reputation for poor school attendance and she was still living up to that reputation.

The school had been working on the problem with Polly's attendance since her first year in school. In addition to Polly not getting an education, the school was losing money on her. The school system was being paid by the State according to the average daily attendance of the children. Her lack of attendance became a major thorn in the school administration's side; the school forfeited State money each day she was not in school.

The truant officer made continual trips to Polly's home and even made the usual threats to Polly's mother. All this had no effect on Polly's school attendance. It became obvious Polly's mother not only was not encouraging her to go to school but was even helping her find ways to stay home. Hard to believe, but remember, I said this is a true story.

Polly had spent two years in the first grade and one year in the second grade. She was in the third grade for the second year when I was consulted. During the first four years she had received grades only one semester out of eight, as she had not attended school enough days to satisfy requirements of the State Board of Education.

Her second grade teacher noted on her report card that while Polly turned in very few assignments, what she did turn in was of excellent quality. The teacher noted, however, that Polly was falling behind and asked for the mother's cooperation in preparing her for third grade. The mother never came for the requested conferences; nothing changed, and Polly was promoted to third grade only because she was too old to be kept in second grade any longer.

The following graph shows the percentage of days Polly was present during the first and second grades, and the first time in the third grade. As you can see, her attendance was consistently poor with the best attendance being only slightly over half during the second semester of the second grade. This was her best attendance for the whole four-year period. Attendance records were not available for the first year in the first grade so it is not shown on the graph.

This year was no exception. Polly was repeating her old pattern. She rarely came to school. The school officials wrung their hands and sent the truant officer out again, still with the same results. This teacher had tried everything she could think of with no results, including notes and calls to Polly's mother. During one early morning call, Polly's mother said she knew Polly needed to be in school; she said "You'd be surprised how much they miss out on when they're not in school."

There was some hope, however, because Polly did come to school occasionally. She was coming about an average of one day out of four, certainly not enough to learn the things a third grader needs to know.

Her present teacher described Polly as being extremely bright with a natural grace and dignity. Polly seemed mildly interested in the activities and studies of the classroom and participated willingly though not enthusiastically. She was fairly quiet and reserved and the other children hardly noticed her. She caught on to the subject matter easily and quickly and her teacher felt she had real potential if only she would attend classes.

The teacher explained all this to me and asked if there was anything she could do to get Polly into school more. This seemed to be an ideal problem to handle using common-sense behavior modification so I outlined a plan. Even though it was late in the school year, we felt something should be tried.

First, I explained to the teacher we should not be concerned about what Polly was supposed to do--that is, come to school voluntarily without special attention because that is what all children are supposed to do. We were not going to be concerned that it was not fair for a child to be getting special treatment because she was not doing what she should. This is the fairness idea and is of little help in getting things done with children.

Rather than worrying about being fair, we were interested in helping Polly. We wanted her to come to school whether we did it fairly or not. We defined our goal as "Polly coming to school," not "us being fair." This eliminated the "supposed to's" from consideration. Of course Polly was supposed to come to school. All the other children came to school. The fact was Polly was not coming to school and she was not getting an education.

Next, we needed to find something the teacher could do easily that would make coming to school rewarding for Polly. Since Polly usually stayed in school on those rare occasions she did come, our problem was only to get her to walk into the classroom at the start of the day. That narrowed it down a lot. Since we had no control over Polly's mother, the truant officer or the school officials, we left them out of the problem and decided to work only with Polly.

I believe the single, most rewarding thing a child can have is the undivided attention of a significant adult. This is a hands-down winner over the usual things the behavior-modification experts tend to use--such things as candies, money or other tangible goodies. (Unfortunately, this changes during the teen-age years when the approval of other teens becomes the most important thing in the universe.) So, we decided the teacher was to reward Polly with undivided attention for showing up at the classroom door in the morning as school was starting.

The reward was to be exactly this and no more: When Polly came in the morning the teacher was to look over and exclaim that she was delighted to see Polly and to get up and go over to Polly at the door, to touch her, and to escort Polly to her desk. All the while, the teacher was to give Polly her undivided attention. This took about one minute or less to accomplish. After that she was to treat Polly like all the other children. This would be hard to do if Polly never showed up at the door; however, remember she did come to school some of the time.

After this procedure was started, Polly's attendance remained the same for a short while and then started improving. She actually started coming to school more often. She exclaimed to her teacher one day that her mother thought she was too sick to come to school, but she said "I wanted to come anyway." She really wasn't very sick.

The teacher was pleased with the results and Polly was doing better, but she wasn't coming to school all the time. I thought it might help if we increased the power of the reward. Why not, I thought, enlist the aid of Polly's peers in the reward process? All we had to do was reward the other children whenever Polly came to school. How could this be accomplished without making too complicated a situation out of it?

We decided the teacher would have a "Polly Party" every time Polly came to school three days in a row. Since Polly was coming much more often, it wasn't hard to make this happen. The "Polly Party" consisted of small, inexpensive treats the teacher would buy and bring to school. Since this teacher was concerned about the children's nutrition, she was not willing to buy candy or cookies or things like that. Instead, she bought miniature carrots, celery sticks, small boxes of raisins and the like.

On the day Polly qualified for the "Polly Party" the teacher would make an announcement that a Polly party would start the first break period that morning in honor of Polly's attendance record. During the party, Polly would get to help the leader of the day pass out the carrots or whatever the treat of the day was. This was done during the first break of the morning. It took about five or ten minutes. Nothing special was done to make it a party except to call it a party.

Very shortly after starting the "Polly Parties", the other children started keeping count of the days Polly was present and soon became her cheering section. Whenever Polly showed up at the classroom door, not only did the teacher pay special attention to her, but so did the whole class. She usually got a real cheer from the other children. Talk about reward! Polly was close to heaven.

Later, we decided to stretch it a bit and increase the required number of days of continuous attendance to five days--a full school week. This didn't cause any problem. The children merely saw it as more of a challenge and cheered Polly on even more. Polly's entrance into the classroom became an important event for everyone and the children really seemed to enjoy the whole thing. Her attendance problem was well known to the other children as well as the school officials so the children really took an interest in her progress.

Needless to say, Polly's attendance became close to perfect (absent only four days out of the last six-week period) and she actually learned the kinds of things a third grader needs to know. She was promoted to the fourth grade, this time because she had earned it. The teacher was proud, but not as proud as Polly.

By the last half of the year she had become more social, smiled much more freely, and was noticeably popular with the other children. She was even the favorite of the most difficult child in the class who liked hardly anyone. In short, Polly had become a happy, enthusiastic child. These things were by-products of the process and, in addition, her grades were excellent.

The next graph shows the changes in her attendance during the year of the Polly Parties. The shaded area shows the time we spent with behavior modification. I think you will agree there was a considerable improvement in her attendance during that period.

Alas, this story has an unhappy ending. At my encouragement, the teacher wrote up a description of what she had done and included attendance graphs and other data that demonstrated clearly that a miracle had almost happened. She took this report to the school principal who was only mildly interested, but allowed the teacher to place the report into Polly's records so the fourth-grade teacher next year could carry on with the process. All children are worth saving and Polly was on the way.

At the beginning of the following year, the teacher contacted Polly's fourth-grade teacher and found Polly was attending school regularly. The teacher asked if the fourth-grade teacher had read the report and offered her help if the new teacher wished to continue with some variation of the plan in order not to lose the gains that had been made.

The fourth-grade teacher said she had read the report, but she didn't feel a child should be rewarded for doing something she was supposed to do. All the other children could get to school without all that fuss. Besides, she didn't have time to do all that because she had a room full of other children to teach who were responsible enough to come to school without having to be bribed. She made it clear she would not continue with any similar procedures with Polly. In short, this teacher was hooked on fairness.

Our original teacher kept checking on Polly and found her attendance at school started dropping off until, finally, Polly was attending school about one day out of six. She was back where she started. The teacher was sad to see this happen but there wasn't anything she could do. I was sad. This was a potentially productive member of society who would have little chance to succeed.

Ten years later, the teacher and I were eating in a local establishment (the teacher is my wife, incidentally) and we saw Polly. She was working in the place we were eating. She didn't seem to have any spark. Her air of sweetness and grace had been replaced by a kind of hardness. We never will know whether she is a happy, satisfied person living up to her potential as a human being, but probably she is not. An education is needed to do very well in our society and an education includes many things other than readin', ritin' and rithmetic.

The question naturally arises about how long a teacher should keep up this treatment of a single child. My primary answer to that question is to keep it or some variation of it up as long as it takes. I wouldn't expect the Polly parties would need to be continued as evidenced by Polly's good attendance at the beginning of the following school year. They would not even have been appropriate in the new class. The parties were a response to a very serious attendance problem which existed in a particular setting at a particular time, and which no longer existed the next year.

I think all the fourth-grade teacher would have needed to do was to treat Polly like she was a special person. I think that goes for all the other children in the room too. If the teacher would take the first few minutes of each class day to personally greet each child as he enters the room this would make each child feel special. It would also probably help the continuing relationship between teacher and child which could make school more enjoyable for both.

If teachers feel they don't have time to devote some individual attention to each child then I think something is wrong with the educational system. It is easy to forget the overall goal of education. Maybe there are many different opinions of what the goal should be. I feel it should be the same as the job of parents which I stated at the beginning. Children should be helped to develop fulfilling and rewarding lives. A setting in which children learn to enjoy the educational process will go a long way toward that goal.

We all have a choice about how we will relate to others. When the others are children, we have a great responsibility. Their lives are forming and we are influences on them. We can stick to being fair, and treat everyone the same, or we can remember everyone has special needs and try to help them grow. I believe that is the best way for us to grow as well.