Personal Responsibility In Daily Efforts is the main goal of the Pride Team: to encourage students to work hard in school so they are eligible to attend field trips by meeting certain criteria.

Principal Lamond Dean started the Pride Team at the school he worked at previously so that students would have something fun to work for, and to give an incentive for good behavior.

“School has gotten to where it’s education heavy – which it should be, but sometimes it’s not always our favorite thing to do,” Dean said. “We also want it to be an enjoyable place for students to come. We want [students] to enjoy school and have something to look forward to.”

In order to be able to go on these trips, students must pass all of their classes, have fewer than one excused absence per six weeks, and have not gone to SAC or after school detentions for disciplinary reasons.

“It makes students be responsible, pass their classes, come to school, stay out of trouble, and behave appropriately while they’re at school,” Dean said. “It’s an incentive program to do that.”

The Pride Team has other ways of encouraging students to do well in school, such as passing out Viking Bucks and awarding a student of the month.

“The students are able to get Viking Bucks based on their ability to do things that are of courteous behavior on a daily basis,” Dean said. “That also ties into winning prizes as you may see with the drawing, as well as our students of the month that each staff member gets to do.”

As long as students meet these requirements, they have the opportunity to go on a trip every two six weeks. The first trip was to the movie theater for students to watch a movie of their choice, and Pride Team coordinator Patty Willems said that they had more students eligible than expected, with 792 students meeting the requirements, and 494 actually attending.

“We took them over to the cinema in Bryan where they got to see two movies for free,” Willems said. “We also fed them pizza for lunch, and I think they had a great time based on the students we talked to. They were really surprised and excited to actually watch the movies that were there at the theatre.”

The Pride Team took a trip to Grand Station for the third and fourth six weeks, and have an elite trip planned at the end of the year for all the students who met the requirements to go on every trip.

“These are the kids that did all these things for the whole entire school year, so we have planned and are preparing the final details to take them to Sea World in San Antonio,” Dean said. “That’s something we’re looking forward to, to give to our student body in hopes that they will continue to do things that will get them on the trip.”

Dean said he hopes to eventually let students join the Pride Team in order to get a student perspective of what students would like to do on the field trips.

“Next year we plan on using students and organizations input so that we can get the student perspective of what may be a good incentive,” Dean said.

Willems said that she’s very excited to see where the Pride Team will go in the future and how it will impact students in the long run.

“We want our students to be successful, not only here at Bryan High, but out into the world as they become 12th graders and move on to be law abiding citizens that contribute to society,” Willems said. “That’s our goal, for everybody to be successful.”