A Few Thoughts
We're at the seventh day of school and so far things are going incredibly well. Students and staff have gotten the year off to a great start and there is lots of learning going on in our classrooms. Hopefully, we can avoid any more large amounts of rain and lightning, especially on Friday nights. The biggest glitch remains with PayForIt. They have assured me they will get it resolved, getting both the lunch payments and fees transferred to Powerschool and getting any fees reimbursed for anyone who was charged a service fee prior to August 6th. We are not the only district who has this problem with PayForIt. As mentioned earlier on Facebook, we are looking for a new online payment processor, so please do not make any new payments using PayForIt. Thanks for your patience as we work through this. If sending money for lunch, we ask that you please send a separate payment for each child. Our system does not allow for a family account at this time, so it must be handled separately. Especially if your children are in different buildings.
On a different note, I want to take a few lines to talk about the importance of attendance and being on time. First, if your child is sick, running a temperature, etc. please keep him/her home until he/she recovers. This helps keep other students from getting sick. If your child is frequently sick and missing a lot of school because of it, you may want to seek the help of your family doctor to see if there is more going on. Attending school regularly is the first step in your child being successful at school. Chronic Absenteeism (defined as missing more than 10% of school) is on the rise. Two years ago, Governor Branstad and then Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds created a task force to address this growing problem in the state. Statewide 10% of the students were Chronically Absent. We're better than that here in New Hampton with 4% of our students meeting that level, but that's still a pretty high number of students. For some, we are aware of legitimate medical reasons for the absences, but many aren't very clear. In addition, even if you're child is not at 10% every day missed is an opportunity to miss some important learning. Yes, students can make up missed work, but often the most important learning is what takes place in the classroom with the teacher and other students present and that cannot be made up. If you're child is struggling in coming to school or you suspect there are other issues going on, please reach out to your child's teacher, school counselor, building principal, or myself. We want to help in any way we can.
District Initiatives
Over the last several years you've heard about Iowa BIG North, Midmester Academy, and J-Term. These are all district initiatives we've implemented to engage our students more and provide them with the skills they need to succeed in the world that awaits them after graduation. In the past, we focused on reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and citizenship skills. We've gotten good at that and have prepared a lot of students for college or whatever their pursuits were after high school. Take a walk through our hall of fame and see all of the people who have graduated from New Hampton High School who went on to do notable things. I'm sure there are many others that are not in our hall yet. Unfortunately (or maybe it's fortunately), we now know that not everyone needs a four year degree and there are a lot of other important skills our kids need to have in order to be prepared for their future. Specifically, what we call the 4 C's: Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. In our world today, these are the keys to success in most fields. The other thing we know is that students learn best when they are involved in hands-on real world projects that have meaning to them. That's why we started these projects and will be continuing and enhancing them into the future.
Students still need a solid foundation of basic skills, so we will continue to work on those while bringing in more hands-on, real-world, student centered opportunities for our students. This year you will start to see more projects and problems being implemented into our regular classroom instruction. We've always done a lot of projects, but they were often completed after the instruction to measure what the students learned. We are working so the project or problem is the major part of the learning that occurs within the class. It's new for all of us, but we see promising results and those who have done it are seeing great things with student achievement, post high school success, and improvements in basic skills. I don't think it's a secret that if students can work on things they are interested in, they will work harder and get more out of it. We will be talking more about it as the year goes on. Next Tuesday night, the board will be having a work session. They will be discussing the movie Most Likely to Succeed. If you are available, please stop out to the high school media center to listen to the discussion. It will be interesting and insightful. We are looking to eventually hold a community viewing of the movie as well. Below is the trailer from the movie:
Why are we doing this? The world we live and work in is changing quickly. The skills we've taught in the past are mostly still needed, but there are so many other skills that are also needed to succeed in our future world. Here's a short video that also looks at the world of work:
Please stay tuned as we move forward and make sure our students are prepared when they graduate for the exciting world of opportunities that await them.
Building Project Update
If you've been by the high school recently, you will notice quite a bit of activity around the building. First, we have expanded the upper parking lot and now have space for 24 cars plus handicapped spots available. This will help a lot with the parking around the building. We also have encouraged the students to park on the east side of the driveway which has freed up a lot of space within the main lot. We received a semi-truck load of steel and there was plenty of room for him to drive into our lot and get turned around. During the day will not be an issue, but events can be tight. As mentioned before, we are looking to start receiving wall panels on September 24th. That's why they are putting up all the steel they can right now to have it out of the way when the panels arrive. If we can keep the amount of rain to a manageable level, the project will continue to progress nicely. Here are a few pictures of the project:
Here's an overview of the entire project area looking North.
Here's looking toward the U which shows the joists up over the cafeteria/lunch area. Directly below the camera is where the gym will be.
This is looking north toward the backside of the entrance of the middle school.
This is a shot of what will eventually become the main entrance to the middle school addition. I will post this shot regularly to show the progress on the building.
If you have any questions about any of this, please reach out to me at any time. Go Chickasaws!
