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Report from the Academic Coordinator This year we have been concentrating on ensuring that students are provided with the opportunity to challenge themselves academically. Research has shown that the more rigorous a curriculum, the greater the increases in student performance. We are proud that we can offer students a variety of exciting courses in which they can challenge themselves this year. In-class activities have included experiments with cow eyes in Chemistry to help students learn about lab safety. Chemistry students have also recently held “element elections” to learn more about the periodic table of elements. In World History, students are using current events as a starting point for learning about the past, and the Geometry class recently finished making a video in which they reviewed basic principles of math – with a lot of humor! Humanities courses this year include Banned Books, Historical Linguistics, and Contemporary Literature. In the Prairie Lights Humanities class, students are reading various forms of literature and attend readings in Iowa City by the authors. Will Power, a hip-hop performance artist, even came to Scattergood to give the entire community a preview of the show that students in the class saw in Cedar Rapids. Michael Luick-Thrams also brought a group of relatives of German WWII POWs to talk with students and staff about their experiences. We have also had some great projects and PE classes this year,
including volleyball, soccer, fencing, glassblowing, ceramics, bow
making, stained glass, and a new school newspaper project. On
Scattergood Day, students, families, and friends were treated to a play
performed by students in Drama project, and the community enjoyed
reading a display of interviews produced by one of our ESL classes.
Several juniors and seniors took a trip to visit Beloit and Guilford
colleges, spending the night in the dorm and attending classes. We also
held a staff alumni forum in which Scattergood staff members shared
their college experiences with students and answered questions. The
instruction committee approved five independent study project/PE
proposals, and students in those projects are busy developing skills
including choreography and chess. Other students are taking part in
Model United Nations as an extracurricular activity in which they will
research Rwanda and Viet Nam and represent those countries alongside
hundreds of other high school students at a mock-UN conference held in
April. Over the course of this year, we will have nineteen staff members
attend a total of eighteen different conferences and workshops. Many
staff members are attending two or more different conferences. We are
very proud of our staff’s dedication to professional development, and
look forward to sharing what we have learned with each other. We also
have had a new staff member join us in the last month, Jennifer
Warnecke. She will be working with students needing extra learning
support on an individual basis, and we have already started to see great
student improvement as Jennifer spends time with students. |