Elementary uses green-red for discipline

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I just had to post another message in hopes of some feedback. My 5 yr old Kindergartener seems to be hyperfocused on wether he's in the green or yellow, orange or red. I am starting to feel that this school uses these methods and yes, they probably work for the general public, however, my son has since found a way to circumvent the effectiveness of that whole method.
Last week, after three days of being in red, he had an incident where he "slapped" another student...how serious the incident or how minor I'm not sure...no one really saw it apparently. He said they were playing a game of "monkey around". The next day, the child (who he is friends with) smiled and said "hi, Diego" with a very friendly demeanor. (By the way,that incident put him in the principles office for an afternoon).
This week he was excited and very happy that "I stayed in green, I got ten pegs and got to go to the treasure chest and all the kids gave me a hug ! !!" I was soooo relieved...the next day when I mentioned it to his teacher, she informed me that in fact he was in orange that day and had been having a difficult week. My heart felt like it was breaking.
I hate this green-red method of discipline and find that it is no longer productive for our son... what can we do?? Any suggestions or similar stories ??
Also, I hate to admit it, but his story was soooo convincing that I thought he must be a genius ! !!

My son's class uses this also. I agree it may work for most kids, but in my son's case he is reminded almost daily that he cannot stay on green and get a prize. It just doesn't work for kids that have impulse control issues. Especially when one of the rules is looking at the speaker. I'll be bringing this up at the next meeting.

are you serious?? I don't think that's a good idea for ANY child let alone kids with AS. So really, what they're enforcing is classification and competition of who can stay in the green. Wow. There's so many things wrong with that on so many levels.

It reminds me of a teacher my son had once who would put a mark on the board every time he "committed and infraction". He did it only for my son (who was 6 at the time) and said "maybe if you see how bad you are during the day, you'll feel the need to change your ways." That was followed up by a call to us in which he said "Your son needs to know that the world doesn't revolve around him. If you ignored him more, his issues would go away." I have never been so angry as I was that day. Needless to say, we pulled him that same day. Ridiculous.

I really feel that strategies like this only reinforce the positive for kids who can follow the mainstream, and it reinforces the negative for kids who can't reach that goal. It's awful.

That's just my two cents though. I'm pretty passionate about that sort of thing.

And depending on how the teacher does things, it makes the other children aware of which children aren't on green. And that stinks.

reminds me of the idiot "chip system" my daughter's teacher has....white=minor infraction , blue=moderate infraction & sit at the quiet table for lunch, red=major infraction, sit at quiet table for lunch, & get a note home to parent...........yeah...daughter *really* understood this system ! She kept coming home excited that she could balance 2 chips on end at the same time !~yeah, this *really* worked !

I've been at work and now am out the door...but, I just wanna say again THANK YOU ALL ... you don't know how valuable your feedback has been for us...keep it coming ! !!
Lauradiego

Are they using a communication book with your son? We used to use one with Spencer when he was smaller and it was invaluable. His EA (Educational Assistant) would use a word/picture combo for everything that he would normally do during the week (read a book, played outside, ate my lunch, drew a picture, math etc) and he would put an X over everything he did during the day. Then under that was pictures of faces and emotions (happy, sad, frustrated, worried, excited, angry etc) and he would also put an X over the emotions he felt during the day and his EA would write notes beside the facing explaining why he felt that way. Then there was a section at the bottom where she could write notes to us. It made it much easier to guage has his week was going and also gave us something to use to instigate a conversation with him about his day.