AHS inspires “Eagle Family” faculty involvement with school activity bingo

October 19, 2018 | 3:03 am

Updated October 18, 2018 | 10:03 pm

Photo courtesy of Apollo High School

At a DCPS Board Luncheon on Tuesday, Apollo High School presented one of their recent successes to the board — Apollo Bingo.

In an effort to bridge the gap between veteran faculty and new hires, and to combat isolationism occurring amongst high school teachers and staff, the AHS administration came up with a creative idea during a professional development meeting last year. Apollo Bingo was born, and principal Rick Lasley and assistant principal Kyle Brown say the game has been a major success since its inception.

Lasley and Brown gave each faculty and staff member a bingo card that included a variety of events, actions and volunteer opportunities teachers and other staff could choose to participate in during the school year. Each time a faculty member attended an event, or performed an action, they were able to check off that specific box.

According to the rules, once someone accomplished a bingo of five squares, Lasley and Brown rewarded that teacher for their involvement, using candy bars and other smaller prizes as part of the rewards system.

The game proved to inspire a resurgence of faculty involvement in the diverse lives and activities of which their students participated, an achievement Lasley and Brown were very proud of. Not only that, but they found the game promoted more interactions between teachers from different generations.

“There’s a shift happening. We’ve got a mass of teachers not in that veteran category,” Brown said. “It was important for them to understand the ‘Apollo Family’ slogan. We needed to come up with a way to kind of buy them into ‘What is Apollo all about?’”

Brown said a single teacher checked off 38 boxes last year. This year’s bingo includes 48 individual squares. Bingo categories range in variation as AHS administrators strive to include as many students as possible in the game.

Boxes on the bingo board include attending different athletic events, from football games to swim meets, and everything in between. Volunteer opportunities include working a concession stand, volunteering at an academic meet, and chaperoning a dance.

Bettering the lives of AHS students is also a focus across the board, which includes actions such as sending a birthday card home to a student, carrying a student’s backpack or books to their next class and visiting a funeral home for a student’s family member.

“It covers a very wide array of things you can do at school–after school, during school, being a good person, being a good neighbor, having good character,” Brown said. He added that around 120 to 130 AHS faculty staff–including custodial and cafeteria workers–are participating in the Bingo game.

Students in AHS’s special education program have been enlisted to pass out prizes earned and, over the last two days, almost every one of the 100 prizes offered has been claimed due to high participation numbers.

October 19, 2018 | 3:03 am

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