On Wednesday, students across the Crookston School District had an asynchronous learning day via Google Classroom, and the staff at each school took some time to review the winter data on student learning.
Washington Principal Denice Oliver said it’s great to have kids back at school. “It’s terrific to have our kids back in school,” said Oliver. “I don’t think there was anyone in our district who wanted to be distance learning. Of course, safety has to come first, but now we’ve got our kids back in school, and that’s a great thing. We’re happy to have them back.”
Oliver said Washington has also had minimal issues with COVID this year. “We’ve been super fortunate,” said Oliver. “We have had very minimal issues with COVID at Washington School. We have a lot of mitigation strategies in place like the other schools and are continuing to do those. The temperature checks, requiring masks, hand washing, sanitizer use, everything we can do to keep people safe, and its worked very well for us.”
The last few months of school seem to fly by after conferences said, Oliver. “Our school year never slows down,” said Oliver. “We have so much to do before the end of the year. In fact, we panic this time of the year because we always want more time with our students. We always find that once parent-teacher conferences hit in February, the rest of the year just flies by. We just finished a winter data retreat with our teachers. They collect all the winter data on how kids are progressing in school, so we provide that if they need more support. If they need acceleration because they are doing well on their benchmarks, we try to provide them with some accelerated activities. We try to differentiate on how they’re learning and believe when we do that children can grow even more.”
Washington will also begin prepping for the next group of first-time students in the district this spring. “In March, we have our I love to read month, which is something we do annually, but we’re changing a couple of things about how we do them to keep it safe for everyone,” said Oliver. “We’ll be doing pajama days, Camp Read-a-lot, fishing for books, things like that. In April, we have a busy month because we have kindergarten roundup. It will probably be virtual, but we have some ideas so parents can get to know what kindergarten is like at Washington School. We’ll provide parents with some education pieces to help them know how to get their child ready for kindergarten, information on required immunizations, and how to register. We also have early childhood screening in April, which we usually do in January. That’s for 3-5-year-olds and required in Minnesota for all kids. That is April 12, 13, and 15, and you’ll be hearing soon about early childhood screening.”
While the year has been a challenge, Oliver said staff will identify the positives that can be carried forward as things return more to the old normal. “We have had to change a lot of things, but there are so many unintended positives that can come out of change,” said Oliver. “We talked as a staff about how we’re going to reflect on our year to determine what did we change that made things better for our kids that we’re going to keep and what are we going to throw away with COVID. We’re hoping we can get back to some sort of a new normal next year, but we’re going to keep the things that worked well for us.”
