SMS is finishing the year with only 19 students chronically absent! This is compared to 50 students last year and 121 students the year before. We are beyond proud of our students, families, faculty, staff, and community for believing in SMS and making attendance a priority!
To celebrate, SMS brought in Real Deal Gaming of Alabama to coordinate a gym takeover! Students enjoyed over 50 gaming stations including classic arcade games, Wii, Nintendo Switch, and Playstation 5 games with their classmates and teachers!
This celebration was funded through the support of Representative Troy Stubbs! Earlier in the year, Representative Stubbs presented a check to all three schools, and student incentives is how we chose to use our funding at SMS. What a powerful use of the funds it was to show our students how proud we are of their Progress Over Perfection!
Check out our video capturing some of the excitement of the day: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pMBNL3RF6TmWXt2ukPqzUw1ZS2oT-g6B/view?usp=sharing
Some of the students provided feedback on the event! See their quotes below:
“I really enjoyed it. I had a great time laughing with my friends and destroying them in Mario Party.” -7th Grade Student
“I thought it was really fun. I think it was a good motivator.” -7th Grade Student
"I really enjoyed what we did today. Thank you for letting us have this for our last year here at SMS!" -8th Grade Student
"I want to thank all of the people who made this opportunity possible for us. We had the best time today. My favorite game was the PS5 NCAA game." -8th Grade Student
"I really liked it. I like that there were different types of games for us to choose from. It made it more fun to have a variety." -5th Grade Student
"I enjoyed it, personally. My favorite game was PacMan. It was like being at an arcade without having to feed the machine money. I learned to keep your hand on the controller while playing the game. It makes it easier to WIN!" -5th Grade Student
"This was epic!" -7th Grade Student
"It was really great! I really liked the arcade games! We've got to make this happen again next year!" -6th Grade Student
"I really liked how there was a variety of games. It made it so much more fun to have so many things to choose from." -6th Grade Student