Wednesday, February 28, 2018

A Thanks and a Reminder!




If you are reading this blog, you are most likely a parent.  If you’re a parent, you’ve surely had the experience of driving around your own children in your vehicle.  Therefore, you understand on a very SMALL level, what it is like to drive a bus full of children.  Imagine driving your vehicle with 50 children in it!  Our bus drivers do this each morning and each afternoon for 9 months of the year!  Our drivers get our athletes to and from away games safely, navigate the Twin Cities during state competitions, and have to drive late at night many times!  I’m not sure HOW they manage to do it with skill, patience, and kindness but they do!  We are grateful for our bus drivers and appreciate all they do for our students!  Happy Bus Driver Appreciation Day!   

Parent/Teacher conferences for the high school are scheduled for March 12 from 2:30pm to 8:30pm in the Competition Gym.  Stop by and visit with your child’s teacher, pick up your child’s 3rd quarter report card, or simply come and have some cookies and juice!  

Wednesday, February 21, 2018



You know Spring is coming when registration booklets for the 2018-2019 school year come out! Your child brought home a registration sheet and you should have received the registration booklet via e-mail yesterday.  

Here are some notable changes for the 2018-2019 school year:

*10th grade PE is no longer required, but 10th grade Health IS still required.  We offer two Phy-Ed electives (Weightlifting and Fitness for Life) in grades 10-12 that students may register for if they want to take a class in that department.  Some students don’t want to be in Phy-Ed by the time they are in 10th grade and some students want to take a Phy-Ed class.  The choice is theirs!  Heath 10 is a semester class and the content is too valuable NOT to offer our students!  

*Economics is no longer a required class for seniors. The seniors’ schedules are now more open for electives. The only required classes for seniors next year is a year of World History, a year of Language Arts, and a semester of Living On Your Own. We hope this will allow seniors time in their day to take some of the new classes we have to offer.

*Seniors will have a choice between two teachers for World History.  We want students to have as much choice as possible their senior year and this option will provide students with an opportunity to match themselves up with a teacher who best suits their learning style.

*Weightlifting is a new elective to our registration booklet.  Students in grades 10-12 may take this class with Coach Johnston!  He will steer his instruction to fit the needs of a beginner-advanced ability student.

*Fitness for Life is now open to 10th-12th grade students.  Previously, it was only available for 11th and 12th grade students.

*Mr. Clausen is offering a Physics of Robotics elective. (Grades 10-12)  This class will give students a hands-on science elective.  They will be constructing robots, doing some coding, and enjoying the world of Robotics!  

*Mr. Buysse is offering an Intro to Drafting class. (Grades 10-12)  Students will explore areas of architecture, manufacturing, engineering, science, and mathematics.

*Mr. Buysse is also offering a two-hour Building Trades class. (see previous blog for more details).

*Mrs. Ruth Bot will be offering On the Job Training.  This program will offer students a work experience program (off campus) that teaches skills for a variety of occupations.  


*Band and Choir are now stand alone classes!  In our current setup, if you aren’t one of the 25 students who are in BOTH band and choir, you are forced to have a study hall every other day.  Many of our students ALREADY have a study hall a different hour, which means these students are sitting in study halls twice a day, one half of the school days of the year.  Both classes are worth a full credit now and both classes will finally be able to practice each and every day!  Our music department finally gets to take themselves to a whole new level with double the class time, double the instruction, and double the practice!  There are many things we can do in these classes with more time...marching, show choir, etc.  The possibilities are endless!  There should be room in a student’s schedule to have both band and choir as stand alone classes.

*Spanish 3 is offered for all students who have successfully completed Spanish 2.  Students will expand their vocabulary repertoire to include travel, leisure activities and more food!      

*Mrs. Opdahl is offering Digital Media as an elective in the English Department.  Photography, yearbook, digital editing, and more!  

*Kelsea Anderson (Tolk) was officially hired at last night’s school board meeting!  She joins our already talented English department!  She will be teaching English 8, Speech 11, and English 12 for the 2018-2019 school year!  

Because we are a small high school, we are limited in how many electives we can offer to our students.  We are doing our best to offer fresh, new electives to offer classes our students would enjoy.