As part of the AVID class, the program had their weekly Fun Friday.

“On Fridays, (we do activities) for AVID in order build more of a family atmosphere and for collaboration,” AVID Coordinator Kimberly Pena said. “All four teachers have AVID at that time, so we started planning to where we can all participate in some kind of activity.”

This time around, though, AVID did something different in terms of their activity.

“We reached out to the Mansfield ISD Ed-Tech (for ideas), and she showed us the Breakout EDU,” Pena said. “They’re breakout boxes, and so the (activity) is like those maze rooms people go to.”

Pena said the lock box activity was like a scavenger hunt for the kids.

“The students had to look around the Commons for clues (to locate the boxes),” she said. “From there, they had to start unlocking the boxes based on the lock they had.”

The activity served as a way to teach the students how to collaborate with one another.

“I had to communicate with my group in order to open the box,” senior Lindsay Picazo said. “They’re not people I usually talk to every day, so it was a struggle at first to talk to them. After the first few lock boxes, we got comfortable with each other so we were able to work together more efficiently.”

This was the first time AVID has done an activity like the Breakout EDU.

“We always do group activities, but none have been done in this way,” senior Raven Porter said. “This one made us work together in an effective way as we raced to see who could unlock all the boxes first.”

Pena said she wanted to try something new.

“There were different (activities) we could’ve done,” she said. “I just thought it would be fun for everybody to do at the end of a long school week.”