When Guidance Counselor, Mrs. Karen Atkins, established the Student of the Week program with her ninth graders the previous year, people started to notice the great success that came along with the program. In return, Central High decided to extend the program across all grade levels.

“Students can be nominated for a variety of reasons: improvement in attendance, effort, behavior, showing positive character traits, or going out of their way to help or encourage someone; there is no one way to be nominated,” voiced Guidance Counselor Ms. Long.

Mrs. Atkins makes the decision for the ninth graders, Ms. Long for the tenth graders, and Guidance Counselor Mrs. Shea Vetterick for eleventh graders. Finally, College Advisor Mrs. Stacy Alexander makes the decision for the twelfth graders. They all choose the students after receiving teacher recommendations.

The faculty really wanted to set emphasis upon acknowledging and celebrating students for activities that were not exclusively based upon academics. They would see this as an opportunity to celebrate all students; if a student did not do great in the classroom academic wise, they could still be nominated for being an excellent role model.

“We started this program across all the grade levels this year because we are hoping to encourage students to either continue or start making positive choices,” added Ms. Long.

The benefits that comes along with getting Student of the Week is a week of dressing down, this includes all grade levels. Eleventh and twelfth graders will receive the opportunity to get their name put into a drawing for free prom tickets. The staff is wishing to add more rewards as this program continues to flourish, which makes students more excited about these rewards.

“I think that Student of the Week is a great idea. Being able to dress down is an awesome reward that I think every student wants, so this will encourage students even more to be good in school,” expressed, ninth grader, Carmen Breitenbach.

Ms. Long mentioned that there were some goals that she would wish to accomplish in implementing this program.

“I wish to be more positively focused with our students, to reward students who sometimes might feel over looked, to encourage students, and celebrate them for things other than just academic achievement,” commented Long.

This program is trying to plant positive seeds within students across the school. By implementing the program, more students would be encouraged to do more than just work inside the classroom. Student of the week is seen as a motivating factor that encourages students to always do good inside and outside of the classroom.