By Dewey Schara

Neveln Elementary School Principal

For the second year in a row, Neveln Elementary school has been recognized as a “Celebration Eligible” school by the Minnesota Department of Education for our achievement gap reduction. This means we are making continuous progress toward reducing the achievement gap. The state uses a formula based on our state test to calculate what each school’s target numbers should be. We are very pleased with the growth we are making; however, we also believe we need to plan for sustainability. To help us with that, Neveln has teamed with Tiffany Nielsen-Winkelman, a Research Assistant and Ph.D. student from the University of Minnesota’s Learning Technologies Media Lab. With her guidance, Neveln has developed three main goals for the future: To extend the school year, develop programming to enhance critical thinking, and finally, to create a mission and vision to guide us through the process.

Over the last three years the school district has done a lot of work and research looking at different school calendar adjustments that will improve learning for our students who are falling behind. Although there is much debate over what the “perfect” calendar looks like, one thing all groups agree on is that students who are not engaged cognitively during the summer fall behind academically. Last summer Neveln tried something different. We held summer school three days a week from 8 a.m.-12:30 p.m., all summer long with no breaks. This is different from traditional summer school in Austin which occurs during August. In addition to a longer session, we also put an emphasis on learning academic vocabulary through hands on experiences. For example, the students conducted science experiments, went on field trips to the Nature Center and even got to interact with horses. We are now in the process of comparing data to see if we have less regression from past years to measure the effectiveness of extending the school year.

We introduced a new class this year at Neveln — Launch. The Launch class is the elementary version of Project Lead the Way. This is the same program students will experience at I.J. Holton, Ellis Middle School and Austin High School. The emphasis of the curriculum is to teach problem solving skills and creative thinking. The students work in small groups to conduct experiments, solve problems and even build robots. We are offering the Launch class one day a week to our first- and second-grade students and three days a week to all third- and fourth-grade students.

The Launch curriculum addresses Minnesota’s State Standards in science, reading and math. One unique feature for our program is two teachers are always in the room teaching all the students during Launch. The classroom teacher and Launch teacher work together to guide students. While we work very hard to continually improve our math and reading scores, we also believe that problem solving skills and creative thinking are areas we have neglected in the past which we can address through Launch.

Finally, our Neveln Steering Committee, made up of teachers from every grade, has worked closely with Tiffany Nielsen-Winkelman, our U of M colleague, to create a Vision and Mission for Neveln Elementary School. In essence, our Vision and Mission guide all of our building decisions and complement the school district’s Vision and Mission.

Our Vision statement is: “Neveln Elementary school is an environment where learning is embraced and mistakes are encouraged, by practicing our values every day.”

Our Mission Statement is: “Neveln Elementary is a public school that partners with families to give every student the opportunity to love learning.”

The values we practice are: Serving, Challenging, Innovating, Engaging, Navigating, Collaborating, Exploring and Supporting. We developed these important statements by identifying the kind of student we wanted to help develop in preparation for when they leave Neveln at the end of fourth grade. Our teachers also wanted an agreed upon set of values that we can use to guide everything we do at Neveln.

At Neveln we are very proud of our achievements, including extending the school year, creating Launch and developing a Mission and Vision. It is an honor to be recognized by the Minnesota Department of Education. Yet, our ultimate goal is to continually improve and serve our community and families by providing the best opportunities possible to all of our students.