Over the summer, a group of teacher representatives of each department formed a committee to discuss how to better utilize seminar time. 

The 19 faculty members came up with many minor and some major changes to better meet the two goals of the school’s accreditation process, relationships and relevance. 

“We were reexamining our seminar time to figure out how we could do a better job especially on the relevance part, so we decided to build in some time to help students with more real-life skills,” instructor Abby Gillan said. 

Some of the changes made include specific times set aside for checking emails and grades, days with no passing to learn certain life skills and opportunities to listen to career speakers. 

“Each speaker might not be a good fit for everyone, but a small group of students could really learn some beneficial information from different presenters,” instructor Jayme Goetz said. “I am looking forward to when they come in, and I can hear feedback from the students.” 

The committee decided since the format of seminar was changing that they should change the name as well. They settled on the name PRIDE Time to replace seminar. 

“It is just a name; it’s essentially the same period of time,” Gillan said. “We’ve just formalized what we are doing.” 

One of the committee’s main goals was to teach students life skills and a sense of accountability that will set them up for success. 

“We made our decisions based on what we felt would help the students succeed the most in their futures,” Goetz said. 

21abrooks@usd489.com