BROOKINGS – Dakota Prairie Elementary School Principal Kirstin Girard and its teachers want the community to know what’s happening at the school, both now and in the near future.
Girard and two of her teachers filled in the Brookings School Board at Monday night’s board meeting.
As the newest building within the Brookings school system, it was a top priority of Girard’s to foster an identity for the new school. Key to this school’s identity is leadership, she said, both by “building leaders and building a culture of leadership.”
For the students, this has been done through a variety of events, such as the Leadership Book of the Month, where Girard reads to all the children.
“This is an opportunity for every child in our building to have a shared experience with a piece of children’s literature, looking at it through the lens of leadership and the characteristics that the main character portrays,” Girard said.
There’s a weekly event targeting leadership in the school’s girls, too. Each week, female students have a chance to apply for a leadership lunch with the school’s counselor, Randi Hartman, by telling her what they’ve done to be a leader that week.
“If one of our students has not portrayed some leadership qualities that week, it still serves as a nice learning opportunity for that child for the counselor to sit with them. It also just promotes the positive behavior that most of our girls are portraying,” Girard said.
They even have what are called classroom buddy opportunities, where third-graders interact with kindergartners and junior kindergartners to teach certain topics, allowing the older students a chance to act as leaders and role models for their younger peers.
Next year, Girard wants to look into more opportunities to have students do video announcements. So far, there have been a couple weeks where they’ve had students actually lead announcements, even to the point of creating their own scripts. This is something she wanted to see continue and expand this fall.
It’s not only students at Dakota Prairie who need chances to be leaders; teachers are also need opportunities to develop and grow leadership skills.
Key to that is instilling a commitment to lifelong learning, Girard said. Events such as a leadership book study and professional development conferences have helped provide further learning and growth opportunities for Dakota Prairie educators.
“Our district has a great mentoring program that got started this spring, providing a chance for our teacher leaders to help those who are new in our building or new to the profession,” Girard said.
Then there’s the emphasis on innovation in the classroom. One example of this has been bringing flexible learning environments into some of the classes.
Where do you work best?
In November 2016, Girard asked the school staff where it was they worked best. The answers varied: at school, on the couch, standing by the kitchen island, and so on. Then the follow up: Where do you think your students work best?
That was an important question for Girard in order to help students achieve the most they can by making their learning environment work for them. In order to do this, the idea of implementing a flexible learning environment was tried in a couple of classrooms at Dakota Prairie.
“Two of our teachers, Ms. Mogard and Ms. Engebretson, piloted this flexible learning environments, asking the same questions of our students – where do you work best – and providing them the space and a place to do their work,” Girard said.
Photos accompanying the presentation showed they’ve implemented this with existing furniture, sometimes employing simple means to modify them – taking legs off tables to make them closer to the ground, raising tables higher so students can stand while they work, or making reading areas, for starters.
“Every day, the kids get the opportunity to chose where they sit and chose where they’re going to work best. … This was successful for these two to kind of lead this and have a space for other teachers to come in and see and ask questions about what’s working, what’s not working. Since they piloted this, we’ve actually been able to get a little bit of leftover money to help five more classrooms change,” Girard said.
Junior-K, kindergarten
Another point of pride in innovation brought to the forefront during the presentation was the school’s junior kindergarten and kindergarten program and ongoing plans to start taking a multi-age learning approach to instruction there. That would mean having junior kindergarteners and kindergarteners learning side by side in the same class whenever feasible, and in some instances, having the kindergarteners instruct their junior peers.
So, at Dakota Prairie this fall, each of the two teachers – Annie Borns and Kate Mogard – running the junior kindergarten/kindergarten program will take on half of each grade, giving each teacher a group of junior and regular kindergarteners to instruct. The following year, those in junior kindergarten will advance a grade, but as a kindergartener, would still be taught by the same teacher.
As far as how those students in this program would compare to other kindergarteners elsewhere in the district, they’d be on equal footing, Mogard said. These students mustn’t be thought of as being in a remedial program nor as being part of an elite group.
It’d be the same full-day program seen throughout the district that would adhere to the district schedule and calendar.
There are plenty of benefits they expect, both from those aspects already in play in their program, and those anticipated to follow.
By having junior kindergarteners stick with the same teacher the next year, they’re more comfortable in a more familiar environment, and the benefits from that could extend to the new students, too, Mogard said.
“We’re hoping that by having half the peer group be a little older, a little more in tune to what’s going on in school, that they’ll already be natural leaders from having that extra year,” Mogard said. “A lot of behavior can improve among all students because they’ve learned from others, modeling for others. So we hope to see some improvements all around in those areas, too.”
Borns added, “One of the best ways to show learning is when a child can explain their learning and thinking, and what better way to do that with a younger peer? That would be a positive leadership quality for our kindergarten students and also the younger always like to strive to be with the older. We’ve always wanted that. In kindergarten, there’s always someone who wants to be the boss; well, now there gets to be a boss.”
With her own students and Mogard’s students interactions, they’ve seen this dynamic in play and think it’s promising for instilling collaboration and cooperation.
Mogard said some classes won’t lend themselves to this multi-age setup, however. When teaching math, for example, it would make sense to divide the kids up by grade level again, given the heavily cumulative nature of the subject. Similarly with writing and Encore classes.
A group of formal and informal assessments currently used for junior kindergarten and kindergarten classes such as academic skills and fine motor development would continue to be used in this multi-age setting to make sure data gathered can be compared to their counterparts in other Brookings schools.
The sole change is the addition of a social and emotional development rubric, which would help show a student’s growth in those areas.
Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.
