CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Martin Middle School is getting creative in hopes of motivating their students to attend all of their classes online. We spoke with Martin Principal Dr. John Prezas on what it means to have perfect attendance in the virtual learning era and how it's completely different.
Students at Martin are being awarded high end prizes like a Nintendo Switch or an electric guitar for having perfect attendance.
"Get students used to going to school every period every day and also to give them another reason to go to school every period every day," Dr. Prezas said. "As the weeks progress, we’ve just been able to get more donations of different prizes that we’ve been able to give away and it’s really helped a lot."
Dr. Prezas said being marked present has a different meaning in the learning from home era.
"We encourage all students to be online with Zoom, obviously, that way they can receive direct instruction from their teachers throughout the day," Dr. Prezas said. "If they are not able to do that, parents work, different things come up, they’re able to complete their assignments by midnight, 11:59 p.m. everyday to receive credit for being present in school."
He said having the right resources for every student helps with the overall goal -- a successful education.
"We’ve been able to provide every kid who needs a device, a device," Dr. Prezas said. "Not just one for every household, but multiple per household if we have students there that need it. With that -- we’ve almost been able to reach 90%-percent perfect attendance."
He said the incentives could change once classes switch back to in-person, but until then, students can expect more rewards in the future.