Today at lunch, some South students were rewarded with a “trail mix bar” because of their achievements.

Recently, students have started being rewarded for things such as attendance and grades with various treats at lunch. If you’re lucky enough to get one of these, you may have received an email that you’re on a list. The December reward, right before winter break, was cookies that you could decorate yourself.

This incentive is run by Assistant Principal Brionne Smith, who is new to South this year and is excited to find new ways to encourage and motivate students. She has been working alongside other members of the administration to curate this new reward system. 

Although students think it’s fun to receive cookies, hot chocolate, and the like for their achievements, these treats have brought up some confusion.

Senior Brandon Oglesby says that he has “no idea why I’m getting the email or why it’s happening.” 

Junior Hadiya Usman agrees.

“I feel like they should be more explicit,” she said.

Smith explained that there are 3 different criteria to receive these rewards. The first being 95% overall attendance, as well as all A’s, B’s, or C’s, and “approval from an administrator as far as no office referrals or disciplinary actions.” Smith said.

This system, specifically, is meant to reward improvement. However, she said it’s still new and there are a few things that still have to be developed in order for it work as expected.

For example, one of the biggest issues is that attendance is pulled not from a month-to-month view, but looked at in a cumulative way, which “includes all absences, excused or unexcused” said Smith. Unfortunately, it’ll be hard to fix because the way reports are pulled, it’s difficult to look at monthly data instead of data for the whole year. 

Among students, concerns are different. They have commented on how the food doesn’t motivate them as much because it’s not any better than something they would receive for lunch on any other day. 

Data has not yet supported an increase in student achievement from month-to-month. Smith has some ideas as to why this might be the case, though, pointing out that this is the “most traditional year we’ve had in two to three years” and “there’s a lot of challenges that we have, so maybe that’s kind of messing up data, in some form or fashion because kids are just now getting used to school again, building stamina, you know, there’s other factors.” 

Another issue that students see is inclusivity with rewards. One of the issues Usman pointed out was that “some people can’t have some of the food” because of gluten and other issues. She said, because this is the case, giving people more options could help.

There are several ideas and goals in place behind the scenes with this system, many of which could actually improve motivation and improvement among students.

For one, Smith wants to promote communication with students. she said “I am always open to suggestions” With the rewards, there’s a much bigger goal of encouraging a sense of community and improvement.

“You can’t get better without knowing what’s working and what’s not,” Smith said, which is something important, especially with a system that focuses on improvement. Basically, if people get an email saying that they qualified for a reward, they hopefully will know that they are on the right track. Smith looks at it this way; “It’s not about where you started, it’s where you finish and how you’re going and getting there.”

Senior Brett Thoelke has qualified for all of the incentives this school year. He said he enjoys the treats, because you can customize them to your liking. He said his favorite incentive so far was the trail mix bar.

“Because it was very sweet,” he said. “You could put chocolate chips and marshmallows in it.”

Smith also mentioned that sophomores have been winning with the rewards, and have been consistently qualifying for these lunch treats. 

Smith says that “Ideally, you know, kids are meeting this criteria and are definitely representative of our core values; that’s who we are as Patriots.”