I found Northstar Elementary Principal John Keitges unloading juice boxes and snacks in the teacher’s lounge last week.
He told me that the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) tests for grades 3 through 11th are happening this week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On Friday, 8th graders will take the science test and it will be a makeup day for other grades. I asked him about the snacks.
I'm just unloading, getting some food and snacks, juices ready for a lot of teachers to give it after their tests. Some will give it maybe before to try to give kids a healthy breakfast before we start testing and it gives the kids a little incentive.
He told me that it’s important for kids to do their best on the tests and that everyone needs to show up on time.
Those tests aren't always the most fun, but they are important. It's important for them to do their very best…they're not easy…sometimes it's pretty easy just to maybe give up and we don't want that and so we’re trying to give a little food and snack to encourage kids…
We may give a couple tests just to make sure our systems working on Monday. But with the late start typically testing begins at 8:30 in the morning. So we really need all kids to be there…we can't have kids that show up late join the group…
And so any advice for parents?
I think just letting your kids know, sure, there's more to life than a test but it is important. It shows us the growth from one year to the next it helps us as a school, identifies some of our strengths and maybe some of our weaknesses. So just make sure that parents can communicate—hey, these are important—please do give it your best shot just like everything else in life. You don't want to do something and not try your best. You also don't want to give up when it gets hard. So I'm just encouraging them to do their best, don't give up and we'll celebrate when we're done.
Below is our full interview:
Knoxville High School students recently competed at the South Central Conference Academic Bowl in Albia. Coach Lisa Hermsen is very proud of their efforts.
Cooper Mattox received All-Conference honors.
I stopped to watch an UNO game at the Middle School, and I was honored to be invited to play! I know I’ve played the game before, but didn’t remember how to play. I received lots of advice, and we had fun until the bell rang and everyone was off to class.
Fun in the gym!
Ieland Flanagan is in her first year of teaching. She’s from Grinnell and graduated from the University of Iowa. She teaches ninth-grade language arts and creative writing.
I asked her several questions about teaching you will find in the full interview below, but I really wanted to know what the most important thing she learned as a first year teacher.
I've learned so much. I will say that kind of the area that I've grown the most in as a teacher is probably classroom management. I kind of went into it thinking I'm going to be nice to them. They're going to be nice to me. It'll all be hearts and rainbows and it'll be amazing. But I learned in my first term that being nice—nice to students includes having consequences for their actions. And that is a very valuable lesson for them to learn and having those boundaries with students is very important and you know those kinds of things, so that's kind of what I feel like the main area that I've grown in, but I just feel like I learn something new about teaching every day. I mean every single student is different so I get excited where I'm, oh this works with the student…that's so exciting because it might not work with this other student but like you have kind of individual breakthroughs…
And you find that rewarding?
Yeah, because every student should have a place in education no matter how they learn right?
Are you glad you went into teaching?
Yeah. I really am. I think it kind of combined all of the things that I'm passionate about. I really love writing. I really love reading, and I really love relationships with people and being able to be a trusting and caring adult for some of these kids who don't have that, is really, really important to me, and I feel like it changes things for a kid if they did not previously have that, to just have someone who they can go to about things, and they know that they're someone they can trust and that cares about them….
Here is our full interview:
Congratulations to our 7th and 8th-grade bands for earning Division 1 ratings at SCIBA Large Group Contest! The bands are under the direction of Tim McBride.
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