The 2022-23 School Year is nearly upon us, and the Crookston High School is looking to implement new programs to build back the Pirate Pride that the school and students lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The goal this year that my Building Leadership team and myself decided on this year was to focus on the culture of the building and how do we build back some of that Pirate Pride that we lost over the pandemic,” Crookston High School principal Matt Torgerson explained. “How do we get the attendance at events up and work together as a team and create these opportunities for students to succeed and participate anywhere around the school.”
One way that the school is doing this is by creating a new program known as a Peer Mentoring group, where the school has selected juniors and seniors to work as assistants to the school staff to help make positive role models for the new 7th and 8th-grade students. “One of the things we are starting this year is a peer mentoring group, where we have selected some juniors and seniors who will be working as a principal assistant to myself, Assistant Principal Garmen, and Activities Director Nate Lubarski and are going to be helping us with our 7th and 8th-grade lunches and trying to do a bit of positive role-modeling for them,” Torgerson explained. “Being that kind of big-brother, big-sister idea and make connections with them to welcome our 7th graders to the school and re-welcome our 8th graders back and give them some of those friendly upperclassmen faces and build some of those relationships. Then hopefully knowing that if this program is successful or as we make it successful, those 7th graders might be in those 11th-12th grade chairs helping out the Junior High at that point.” Torgerson says that the school had selected these students that demonstrated great leadership qualities and believes that the younger students will look up to and strive to pick up some of the qualities from them as well.
While the school year has yet to begin, Torgerson and the High School staff is still planning many more programs for the students to help recover the school’s pirate staff and involve the community in their activities. “There are a lot of plans in the beginning stages, so nothing concrete yet, but this is the year of Pirate Culture, Pirate Building, Pirate Pride, and we want to concentrate on that. And our building goal isn’t just based off our students. It’s the students, the staff, and the community,” Torgerson said. “How do we get the community to come and watch our sports, our theater productions, our concerts, and make it more accessible to as many people as possible? We have a lot of things going on at the High School, and we want to share it with everybody.”
We will continue to update the community with any new programs created at the Crookston High School and any schools in the Crookston School District.
