Students excited to be back
By Greg Seubert
If things go according to plan, the Iola-Scandinavia School District will open its doors to students Tuesday, Sept. 1.
Actually, those doors opened earlier this month with the district’s Summer School program, which began Aug. 3 and runs through Friday, Aug. 21.
About 100 kids signed up for the program despite the COVID-19 pandemic that shut schools down across Wisconsin in late March, according to Iola-Scandinavia Elementary School principal Stacey Wester.
“There was a lot of excitement watching the kids walk into the building,” she said. “Many of them were sharing how excited they were to come back. They had been waiting for weeks to come back and start Summer School. I talked with some of the parents as they were dropping off and they were sharing the exact same sentiment: ‘This was all they talked about.’”
Those students included McKenzie Bonikowske. The soon-to-be-eighth-grader signed up for a Service Learning class and spent part of Aug. 12 placing round social distance stickers on the floor of the elementary school.
“We’re putting signs on the floor for our students to follow so they socially distance,” she said. “We’re creating slide shows to explain the signs as well. It’s going to remind them to socially distance and make sure they are listening to their teachers.
“It’s making it easier for them,” she said. “They’re probably going to be very excited, but once they see the signs and the rules, I’m sure they’ll get the hang of it.”
Course offerings
Service Learning is one of the course offerings. Others included Math and Literacy Boot Camp for grades 4K-6; Little House Cooking and Crafts (grades 2-4); Games Galore (grades 2-3); Cyber Adventures (Grades 5K-2 and 3-6); Creative Scrapbooking (grades 3-8); Fun with Food (grades 5-8); and Tech Ed Activities (grades 6-8).
“We have a staff that’s really creative and looks at some of the different options and think about the students and what some of their interest levels are,” Wester said. “We’ll plan and offer classes based off of that. We encourage all students to do some sort of a refresher or boot camp in some of our core subjects like math and reading and pick two others that are high interest or that they think they’ll enjoy.”
Plans for the session began months ago, Wester said.
“We initially were going to have two Summer School sessions, one in June and one in August,” she said. “At some point, we decided not to do the June one and push it back to August. The focus has been on the safety of the students and staff and what we can do to get the students in safely and have a positive learning environment.”
Summer School also provides students – and staff – an indication of how things will go during the upcoming school year.
“This is providing the students a little sneak peek as to some of the things they will be doing,” Wester said. “We have a lot of student leaders who already have their comfort level built up. The fear of the unknown is gone for them and they know there are a few things different in regard to some of the safety protocols, but they’re back, interacting with their friends and teachers and learning.”
Wester isn’t surprised by the turnout of students.
“It’s my understanding that students want to come back and they want to be in school,” she said. “We have incoming kindergarten students all the way up to 12th-graders that are involved in some capacity.”
Wester compared Aug. 3 to the first day of school, which is less than three weeks away.
“They left this building in March and have not been back,” she said. “That’s a long time.”