The Tic Tac Awards: Why prizes don’t matter

It was the last day of term, my year 8s had been really good, and so I decided to treat them. However, I had been telling them every lesson that Mr Elliott doesn’t give prizes because the journey is the reward, as every school child knows – if they didn’t know before, they sure do now.

In rewarding my pupils, I had two considerations in mind: how can I treat them while not compromising on my “no prizes” philosophy? The answer came to me as in a vision.

It was 7:30am and I was sat slouching at my computer when it came to me: each child who had done well would earn the prize of one solitary Tic Tac. Not a box, not a handful, but merely a single pellet of artificially sweetened “reward”. No matter what they thought of the prize itself, I could console myself that no way could this leave a bitter taste in their mouths.