Re-build Positive School Culture With A Student Rewards Program

Climate and Culture Coordinator, Paul Dols set out to increase participation and build connectedness this year at Monrovia High through the use of Minga’s Student Rewards program and Communication modules.

Key Problem Areas:

• Lack of Student Involvement
• Students Lacked Extracurricular Awareness
• Poor Communication with Student Body
• Lack of Student Affirmation and Motivation
• Low Rates of Student Participation After Covid 19
• Insufficient Means of Communication During Emergency
• Cumbersome PBIS Program Needing Replacement
• No way to manage a Student Rewards program

Challenges:

Students were unaware of activities and events on campus, and those who were informed had no motivation to step outside their comfort zone and participate.

Paul’s goal has always been to create an environment for students where they feel celebrated. He told Minga “If we spend more time affirming kids and less time disciplining them, they’ll stop needing as much discipline.” 

Monrovia High School faced challenges in creating a sense of connectedness on campus and increasing student participation in the last few years. The previous PBIS program, which was meant to incentivize student engagement, failed to appeal to students and staff due to its high barrier to entry.

“We used to use 5 Star but that feels like a million years ago. Now that we’ve switched to Minga the point system for us took off, we had way more participation, including teachers.

Students were also unmotivated to try new things or sign up for extracurriculars, and others were entirely unaware of spirit days and events existing all together. This problem not only hindered student engagement but also compromised student safety in emergency situations. Therefore, establishing effective communication channels was necessary to ensure ease of access to critical information.

Solution: A Student Rewards Program

Monrovia High School needed to adopt an all-in one student rewards program for promoting campus happenings and praising students. 

With Pauls goal in mind, he was motivated to find one platform that would make it easy to engage students and reward them for participating in events and activities. Upon discovering Minga, he recognized its benefits as a platform and how it easily combined a student rewards program and communication tool all in one place. 

Using the Student Rewards and Behavior Tracking module, designed for middle and high schools, students were incentivized through peer recognition to participate in extracurricular events. The program was well-received by students, resulting in increased engagement with the school’s content and awareness of spirit initiatives, athletics, and other events.

Minga’s effective communication channels not only help with extracurriculars but also come in handy during emergencies, providing a reliable channel of communication between students and staff.

Results:

Adopting Minga as a single platform for student affirmation and communication resulted in a positive environment and increased student engagement.

As all modules were adopted and implemented, student usage of the app started to gain traction. With the launch of the Rewards Module, students became even more engaged with the platform, stepping out of their comfort zones to interact and participate in extracurricular events, clubs, teams, and activities. With everything in one place, students had easy access to information about all aspects of school life.

My favorite part of Minga, hands down, is giving out praise to the students. It’s something I try to do every day. It’s an easy way to celebrate a kid.

Minga was able to provide Monrovia High with the tools they needed to rebuild their positive school spirit. Climate and Culture Coordinator Paul Dols told us about the school’s newfound feeling of connectedness and skyrocketed extracurricular student engagement. This was due to the heavy influence of the Minga Points and Praise features, as well as the popularity of the app home page amongst the students, as a reliable place to get the details they need surrounding out of class activities, reminder, polls, etc. 

Overall the Minga platform has made Monrovia High School a more connected community, with improved communication, resulting in safer protocols, as well as a huge increase in student participation and feeling of belonging.