Teachers have started a new academic rewards program to award students with high grades called Recognize Outstanding Achievements & Rewards (ROAR). The hopes of this rewards program is to instill an attitude of excellence and to provide struggling students with incentives to improve their grades and celebrate achievements and reward students with continuous high grades. This program takes the place of the old version called Renaissance.

Awards offered will be both in-class and schoolwide based.  The rewards program consists of three levels where students can earn rewards: Gold for A students with 3.8 or higher GPAs, Cardinal for B students with 3.0-3.79 GPAs, and White for students with a C, 2.5-2.99 GPAs or 5% improvement in class.

Teachers will have the ability to choose awards for students in their classrooms under the umbrella of this ROAR program.

New Biology and Human Anatomy teacher, Miss Barcellos, stated, “I think students deserve to be rewarded for they’re hard work in class.” She said she does think this ROAR program will be successful for years to come in the classrooms, but it will be a learning experience for everyone and people will need to get used to it.

Miss Barcellos’s rewards for gold is pizza for students with an A for two quarters at the end of semester; cardinal students in her class get two classwork passes; and white rewards students get a certain amount of time with their notes on a no notes quiz.

Mr. Christenson, history teacher said, “I think it will adapt and get better as it goes year by year.” He said he thinks there should be a standard set of benefits each level gets and even rewards for specific classes that improve the most or specific rewards for students that have the best grades. His rewards for gold include an excused notebook;  for cardinal an excused missing assignment; and for white rewards students, he will excuse a lowest test score.

One of the head teachers involved with this program, Mrs. Snively, says the teachers and administration are trying to let students out early for lunch on specific days depending on grade levels, food trucks for lunch, and raffle prizes.

ASB put together a video about the program too.  It is posted to this story.